Football – the beginning
My love affair with football started in the year 1989. I was captivated by the Road to Wembley tune and the first game I remembered watching on television was the FA Cup final between Merseyside rivals Liverpool and Everton.
The pulsating match ended 3-2 after extra time. Ian Rush and his lookalike John Aldridge were the heroes on that day. That was also the year the Hillsborough Tragedy occurred and it changed the landscape of English football as well as Liverpool’s history forever.
I became a fan of the reds and when we lost the league title to Arsenal with a last gasp Michael Thomas’ goal the following year, I was heartbroken. Incidentally, Liverpool haven’t won the league title since then.
My dad fuelled my passion for football by buying me “SHOOT”,“MATCH” and sometimes 90 Minutes Magazines weekly from the Indian mama shop at Ghim Moh market then. It cost $2.70 and at that time, quite a princely amount. Before internet and ESPN, that was where I read about the match reports, players’ ratings and interviews of all my favourite footballers. The bonus was of course, the centrefold Team photo.
As we watched them play, me and my neighbours would imitate John Barnes, Paul Gascoigne, Stuart Pearce etc… and have our own games barefooted at the void deck. Starting off with plastic balls, we eventually upgraded to Addidas tango and smashed several lightings along the way, running away when we saw the police car approaching.
Manchester United was turning out to be a force then and a dynasty ensued under Sir Alex Ferguson. Watching them play it really reflected their belief that “we never get beaten, we just ran out of time” and they did knock Liverpool off their “**** perch”
Other than English football, I was also following Serie A because it was shown on TV, but found them a bit boring as it was a more defensive and tactical league. The likes of Napoli, AC Milan, Inter and Sampdoria were mostly churning out dull 1-0 and 0-0 results week after week.
Josko Spanjic & Boris Lukic and the semi pro league.
On to the local scene, in the late 80’s I clearly remembered we had 2 Foreigners in our semi pro team, they were rather average and so was our team. We would win a game and lose the next one. This pattern will continue year after year.
Our players then were people like David Lee, D Tokijan, Hashnim Haron, Deveraj Doraisamy etc… we were wearing the white Toyota jersey and I was thinking how easily they got dirty on the rainy pitch.
It was a relatively dull and boring era for Singapore football.
Drinks Culli Pak Popiah
In the 90s, I started going to the National Stadium with my dad to catch Malaysia Cup games when I was in Secondary school. I am sure many Singaporeans have sweet nostalgic memories of our old Kallang Stadium. Our own Old Lady.
Every Saturday brought new excitement, especially so if giants like Selengor, Kedah, Pahang came to play. Joe Dorai and The New Paper would drum up support throughout the week by hyping up the weekend matches and tickets will be sold out within a day. No, a few hours.
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| this is how the ticket look like - hot property! |
The noise inside the stadium, the Kallang Roar (created by collectively stamping our feet) and the Kallang wave formed fond memories even as I look back now as a 40-year-old. Who can forget queueing behind so many uncles just to use the flooded urinal during half time and navigating through thick acrid cigarette smoke to go back to my bench?
On the pitch, we have probably the best Foreign Talent Singapore has ever welcomed in Abbas Saad and Alistair Edwards (I also remembered a certain Craig Forster and he was a decent player and very good looking, then there were “colourful” characters like Michael Vana and Sandro Radun who were involved in match fixing allegations) as they mesmerized the 55000 weekly with their charisma and skill.
One of the best game I witnessed was the 3-2 defeat by Myanmar in the 1993 SEA games. Steven Tan tried his best to rescue us but Lim Tong Hai’s own goals did real damage to our medal hope.
With the return of Fandi, Malek Awab from KL together with oppa Jang Jung, we suddenly had a very impressive team which reached their peak as they trashed Pahang in the Shah Alam 4-0!
I didn’t make the trip down there but cannot forget how the HDB blocks shook and reverberated with shouts of joy as we absolutely obliterated our rival, marshalled by Alan Davidson and Scott Ollerenshaw and plummeted them with goals after goals.
The result was unexpected but much welcomed as we brought the cup home one last time.
Though not in the team that won the Malaysia Cup, Sundramoorthy scored one of the best goal ever witnessed at the National Stadium with his overhead kick against Brunei in a 6-0 victory.
For all their exploits on the pitch, the Lions still found time to release an album and I remembered it goes something like, up and down left and right, Malek can criss cross, Sundram is gonna razzle dazzle you…” ah fun times indeed for Singapore soccer.
Even as I type, the memories of household names like captain Nazri Nasir, Lee Man Hon with his sweet left foot, the disciplined Kadir Yahya bombing down the wings and the late Russian Tank Borhan Abu Samah came flooding back.
There is also a certain Zulklifli Katayoho who has the natural inclination to send his shots to the top tier of the National Stadium.
Four Stars Lion
Under Raddy Abramovic, the lions won the AFC Suzuki Cup 4 times. Though very proud of their achievements, I do not have much recollection of most of those competition as they were mostly disciplined performances rather than flair that won us those ASEAN titles.
The new group of players who were involved were Hariss Harun, Nor Alam Shah, Baihakki Khaizan, Sharil Ishak and Izwan Mahmud and many are still actively playing right now.
I do remember Thailand threatening to walk out midway through one of the game against us.
Tiong Bahru United
After winning the 1994 Malaysia cup, Singapore pulled out of the competition, forming their own S League. As I am staying at Queenstown, I started supporting Tiong Bahru United who played their home matches at the Queenstown Stadium.
Tiong Bahru United’s roster included familiar names like Tong Hai, Steven Tan, S Subramani and was coached by Robert Alberts the Dutchman who led Kedah to League and cup titles. The S League then was drawing healthy crowds of about 3000+ to the neighbourhood stadium and teams had good foreigners like Tawan Sripan, Jures Eras, Marco Kraljevic to name but a few.
I followed Tiong Bahru Uniited FC to away games as well and bought their jersey to wear with much pride. The club later changed their name to Tanjong Pagar United FC and won the Singapore and League cup in 1998 under Tohari Paijan. We had Nicodeme Boucher, Dragan Talagic, Majid Motlagh. It was really a good team that just lost narrowly to SAFFC in the league race.
Right now, S League is in the doldrums and Tanjong Pagar United has already pulled out of the competition for quite a few years. It is my hope that the competition will have a fresh injection of funds and ideas. A major revamp is long overdue.
Contributed by
Marc Ong
