It’s amazing what a difference a year makes. Being away for a year from Singapore has completely messed my bearings when navigating around the island. It doesn’t help when I did not get my licence here and have spent the majority of the last 5 years in Perth. Couldn’t find my way from Tampines to Boon Keng and again from Boon Keng to Sengkang. Geez..I feel like a tourist sometimes. The first few days has been a pretty pacy period with lots of meetings and catchups with old friends. It’s been a pretty fruitful time of catching and it’s good to see everybody in good shape. Well most of them at least..=p.
The maddest day of my short trip back has to be Sunday, where I had to play and watch a total of 4 soccer matches and most importantly, go to church in between. Nice to win both games on the return back but scored the first own goal of illustrious career with a brilliant back-flicked header that dumbfounded my poor goalkeeper. Even Drogba would have struggled to better that.
The saddest result of the day has gotta be Singapore’s unfortunate loss to Vietnam. What made it even more disappointing was the fact that we were the better side and had the stadium packed to almost full capacity (55,000). Was good to see a good section of away support cheering for the Viets which spiced up the evening. The quality of play was decent but the amount of diving and feigning from the Vietnamese was really a lil’ too much for my liking. Simulation and diving is relatively normal in soccer these days but what they did that night was really a little bit over the top. South-East Asian Soccer will not be able to progress if you get incidents like this and others like:
1) The Myanmar keeper getting a one match ban from running half the length of the pitch to push the ref in an earlier group match in Singapore which akins to assault
2) Indonesia deliberately scoring an own goal to lose to Thailand in the final group game of the 1998 edition so as to get a preferred opponent in the semi-finals.
3) Thai players walking off the field just because they were unhappy with a penalty that was given against them when they took on Singapore in the last Asean Cup final at the National Stadium.
That being said, all the best to the Viets in the final and kudos to them for coming up with an effective counter attacking strategy to win the game against a hostile crowd.
On the flip side, the most interesting thing that I’ve seen so far in the last few days has to go to the NEWPAPER for changing its logo from blue to brown. I spent a good 10 minutes at the newspaper stand looking for it not knowing that it changed its logo before the “uncle” at the stand finally asked me what I wanted. After hearing my request he then pointed to a newly formatted paper that was actually right in front of me. I’m pretty sad and will miss the old logo but have got a picture with me and the new one just for the memories…..
The New Newpaper...
God Bless,
Dan
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