The Olympic Council of Malaysia (OCM) will appeal to the SEA Games Federation (SEAGF) to include a number of sports axed by the Philippine SEA Games Organising Committee (PHISGOC) from the list of the previous edition hosted by Malaysia.

OCM secretary-general Nazifuddin Najib said the umbrella body would discuss with national sports associations (NSAs) and national sports councils (NSCs) to decide on the number of sports and events to appeal.

"The first list is a preliminary list from the hosts, but they are expected to include more events. We will definitely work with NSAs and NSCs to appeal most of the sports we did well in SEA Games," he said.

“We will inform NSAs to submit their appeals to us. Sports that are not popular in Philippines will be a challenge [to be included], but sports that are popular, like tennis, ice skating and martial arts have a good chance to be listed."

Last week the PHISGOC released the first list of 30 sports for the 2019 SEA Games scheduled to be held from November 30 to December 10 in three cities, namely Clark, Subic and Metro Manila.

The hosts added new sports, which were not contested in the Kuala Lumpur SEA Games last year, namely baseball/softball, judo/jujitsu, wrestling/kurash, arnis, and dancesport.

The other 25 sports were athletics, aquatics, archery, badminton, basketball, billiards/snooker, tenpin bowling, boxing, cycling, equestrian/polo, fencing, football, golf, gymnastics, karate, sailing, sepaktakraw, shooting, squash, taekwondo, triathlon, volleyball, weightlifting, wushu, and muay.

Among the sports dropped were hockey, table tennis, rugby, petanque, lawn bowls, netball, cricket, water ski as well as track cycling.

In a statement, the OCM said the hosts had excluded badminton, but later reinstated the sport after receiving strong objections from five NOCs, namely Malaysia, Indonesia, Myanmar, Singapore and Thailand.

The National Olympic Committees (NOCs) were given till June 13 to submit their appeals and suggestions for additional sports to be included in the 2019 SEA Games.