Yesterday was an interesting day. I went to Jalan Besar Stadium for a meeting with FAS, along with representatives of other SPL clubs. We were supposed to meet with one of the administrators, a friendly chap named Aloysius, who is in charge of Competitions department in FAS, and has always been part of efforts to reach out to local football fans.
What a surprise then to be greeted by Baihakki Khaizan, Lions centurion and legend. He introduced himself with a firm handshake, and beckoned us to follow him into the seminar room for our discussion. The purpose of this meeting was to discuss a fan club tournament to kick off the SPL next season. The rough idea is to do a 5v5 or 7v7 one-day tournament involving all the fan clubs, and do a mini-carnival where all the clubs can put up a booth to showcase themselves.
The purpose of this would be to generate a bit of hype before the start of the season, and also to create more awareness about the fan clubs, and hopefully get more people to join and be passionate supporters of the local game through the respective clubs.
Of course, there was also lots of chat about the upcoming AFF Mitsubishi Electric Cup, and what improvements can be made to the SPL. Some key points of discussion.
Jay Chou concert meant that we could not play our games in the Sportshub
There was lots of chatter online about how it is a joke that we have a multi-million dollar stadium but we are unable to play our AFF Cup home games there. Instead, we are consigned to the much-smaller Jalan Besar Stadium.
FAS Secretary-General Yazeen Buhari popped by during our meeting and explained how this happened. When AFF first gave dates for the AFF Cup to take place, they said it would be sometime in January 2023. As such, FAS worked with Sportshub to reserve the month of January for Lions games. Jay Chou’s concerts take place on 17 and 18 December 2022. Yazeen said that to Sportshub’s credit, they did not resist much when the request to book the month of January was made, given the importance of hosting national team games there, and they made sure no commercial bookings were made for that month.
However, by the time AFF confirmed the dates, it then came to be that our first home game would be on 24 December against Myanmar, a mere 6 days after the Jay Chou concert. Some of us were curious – was it truly impossible to prepare the venue for the game if there’s a 6-day gap between the concert and our first game? Yazeen told us it was impossible – the Sportshub crew would have to wheel out the concrete surface used for Jay Chou’s concert, wheel in the grass surface used for the football games, and then it would need a further period of time for the soil and grass to truly settle in and be a stable playing surface. This will take at least 2 – 3 weeks. We know of the Sportshub’s previous struggles with grass surfaces even when we hosted huge international teams like Brazil and Japan, so I think it’s understandable that such protocols are in place to ensure the integrity of the playing surface.
Playing at a smaller stadium – is it a bad thing?
In my opinion, it’s not a bad thing. Jalan Besar Stadium is a unique ground in Singapore because it’s one of the few purpose-built football stadiums. The fans are so close to the pitch because there is no running track. This really allows the fans to chant and sing for 90min, and transmit that energy to the players.
It was interesting that this view was backed up by Baihakki. He said a combination of factors, such as the artificial turf, the closeness to the fans, the size of the pitch, and of course, the excellent results achieved there over the years make Jalan Besar Stadium a very conducive place for our Lions to get the results we need to qualify for the knockout stages. While he understands that more fans get to go in and watch the Lions if the match was held at Sportshub, he feels that this enforced change is in no way a bad thing.
VAR in the SPL
Some fans expressed their concern at the refereeing standards in the SPL, and were not confident that VAR would be of much help.
My opinion is that it should help, given that referees have a very difficult task of watching multiple things going on at the same time, plus they are also called upon to make snap decisions that can greatly influence the outcomes of games. As Sailors fans, we have both benefitted and been screwed by such decisions this season – but I feel like we should take a step back and realise that this happens everywhere in the world. VAR should help because it buys time for the referee to look at the incident with various angles, and be in discussion with the rest of his team to arrive at the best decision. It may cause delays, but at least in my opinion it will lead to the correct decision more often.
Baihakki told us that he knows what we go through as fans, and he does feel that perhaps modern referees lack the human touch of the great refs of the previous era, such as Shamsul Maidin, and Abdul Malik. Aloysius then explained further that VAR needs to be implemented sooner or later, or we will not be able to host AFC tournaments, and also our referees would become obsolete – who wants a referee at big tournaments who has zero experience dealing with VAR? Basically, we’re just keeping up with the times.
Other stuff
Talked about a lot of other stuff as well, but I guess the main snippet I want to remember is this – Yazeen looked at me in the eyes and said “I think our Lions will do well this tournament”. I mean, what else was he supposed to say right? But yet somehow, I choose to believe that he’s right and he knows something that we don’t. We’ll have tons of time to talk about our Lions’ chances in the upcoming weeks after our Singapore Cup campaign ends (hopefully not this Saturday), so that’s that for today’s post!
