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Monday, Oct 18, 2010 - 02:07 SGT
Posted By: Gilbert

Best Foot, Forward

It has not been happy times for the beautiful game here, beginning with the S-League withdrawing from the Asian Champions League due to their decision to continue hosting foreign teams. Then, local legend Dollah Kassim passed away, about a year after he collapsed during a friendly seniors' match.

Looking back, it's hard to believe that the S-League has been around for fourteen years - I can still remember getting caught up in the brouhaha when in was in Primary Six. Unfortunately, the novelty died out swiftly, the the league never quite captured the passion of the Malaysia Cup era.

Clubs came and went (Tanjong Pager United, Jurong FC etc, without mentioning foreign invitees) and got mashed together (Sengkang Punggol FC, Balestier Khalsa FC), which by itself doesn't matter that much - many world-famous clubs have had many identities over their lifetime, after all.

Problem is, there isn't much in the way of township identity - tribalism, if you will. No area stereotypes, major historical rivalries, derby equivalents to spice matches up (which may not be a bad thing, from a national point of view). People pick where to live based as much on the availability of flats as anything. The raw tribalism that, let's face it, makes so many football games so alluring, without which they would merely be twenty-two men chasing a ball, is simply absent.

Add to that all the nitty-gritty scandals like match-fixing, footbrawling and players getting paid peanuts (seriously, S$100 a month? they would do far better in construction), and it gets hard to drum up a groundswell of support, especially with a far higher quality of football (and level of intrigue) available at the flick of a button (or would be, if bloody mio TV would fix their inferior technology - come on, it's basically internet streaming).

And don't get me started on the willy-nilly induction of "instant Singaporeans" into the national side (not limited to football); sure, the team might win a bit more, but what's the point?

There are some bright sparks, though - Fandi's kids (13 and 11 years old respectively) have gotten attention from big European clubs (think Milan and Arsenal), and although it's early days to tell if they can make the big time, the signs are good. Imagine of one of them becomes a regular at an EPL or La Liga team - it would probably be a greater boost to Singaporean football, especially at the grassroots, than any campaign the government can come up with.

But NS would more or less halt any budding professional career in its track, so they could conceivably take their mother's South African nationality instead. Oops. Tellingly, from the comments on various sites discussing this issue, the overwhelming majority of local respondants were in favour of Fandi's sons giving up their citizenship if they had a shot at stardom. I am of the same opinion. Good luck!

The Liverpool saga is also finally over, with NESV in and Hicks and Gillett out (i.e. YOYI or Yanks out, Yanks in). As a Manchester United fan, it was nothing less than my duty to follow with glee the circus surrounding Anfield and their less-than-inspiring antics on the pitch, but it got progressively harder to do so as the scope of how pathetic the situation was became apparent. Six points from eight games is frankly beyond poor, and while they're probably still good enough to dodge relegation, I don't see a top-half finish without prompt and significant investment.

Puts United's fortunes in perspective, I suppose - but United are not in an ideal situation either; how investors can effectively borrow from a club to purchase itself, and saddle the club with the interest payments on the loans, eludes me. High finance appears to bear little resemblance to common sense.

Well, at least there are always the moments that everybody can understand:


(Source: Probably Redcafe.net)



Board Games And Another Wedding

Joseph's big day, which made a great excuse for tuanging at the Minds Cafe at Boat Quay before the event at The Fullerton Hotel.

Began with Slapagories, which appears to be a simplified version of Scattergories with more *piak* factor. Not a huge hit, with a big dash of ambiguity - quick, name something in an airplane that begins with the letter H! Handbags? Erm, mostly? Heads? almost surely if the plane is up and flying. Heads-up display? Old planes don't have those, do they? Scattergories resolves disagreements by voting, which is fine if you like this sort of party game.

Saboteur next. Each of the players gets a hidden role, with most being miners, and the rest saboteurs. Each player places path cards down towards the goal cards, with the miners hoping to reach the gold, while the saboteurs try to prevent them from doing so.

Problem was, we weren't exactly sure what would trigger the "miners can't get to the goal" condition, and the packaging was manifestly unhelpful (on hindsight, it seems reasonable to end the round if all 21 slots on the grid are filled). The saboteurs ended up doing pretty obvious mischief from the beginning, which likely wasn't the intention of the game. Didn't turn out very entertaining either.

We moved on to Cartagena, where each player has to advance all six of his pirate pieces to the end of a passage. The passage is filled with symbols, and players have to play a card of any particular symbol to move a piece to the next empty instance of that symbol on the board. However, to draw new cards, the pieces have to be moved backwards to share a symbol with at least one other piece, with a maximum of three pieces a symbol.

This was rather more strategic than the previous games, but it turned out that we played with the more luck-based rules, as we drew from a face-down deck and had hidden hands (so decisions on where to move to were not influenced by the other players' options). Worth another go someday.

There was an attempt to set into Shadows over Camelot, an Arthurian-themed epic game, but quite other than the limited time available, we were discouraged by the rules (several photocopied sheafs), and by the cafe staff admitting that they hadn't figured it out either. Pity, it looked immersive.

Ended up with Shadow Hunters, which degenerated into a (in-character) punch-fest. The Shadow characters appeared slightly overpowered (the Vampire heals with each attack, while the Werewolf counterattacks each attack) compared to the Hunters (who mostly have one-shot abilities), with the Neutrals supposed to be more Hunter-friendly (but it didn't quite turn out that way)

Not too much to say about the wedding ceremony proper - video presentation, thanking of parents and friends, blah blah - but the table conversation was nice. A real pity that they didn't screen United vs. West Brom towards the end, though. Reminder to self: Don't schedule own occasion when United are playing (international weeks should be good prospects).

It has to be said that the table gifts were the most thoughtful that I have encountered:


Mahjong cards!


If only they weren't available only for alternate seats... well, the chocs weren't bad either.



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