[Special] When You Wear Your Jersey On Matchday – Takeaways from an Away Day in Korea

In this SailorFanTalk special, we have a guest writer, Tan Chin Heng! Chin Heng joined The Crew and SailorFanTalk in Korea for our clash against Jeonbuk, and then extended his trip to take in a K League 2 match. Here he writes about his experience and what lessons can be applied to the SPL scene.

“Football is nothing without fans”.

Familiar words that have been uttered by many, most notably by former Celtic / Scotland manager Jock Stein and Manchester United legend Sir Matt Busby.

As we ride off into the sunset of the 2023 SPL season, we have an opportunity to take a step back and move our focus off the pitch to look at the most important aspect of football – the fans. Images of empty stadiums in the Covid-19 era may still be fresh on our minds, and that hollow feeling of watching games without any noise in the stands reminds us that fans really are an indispensable part of the beautiful game.

A Fan Watching the Fans

As an avid groundhopper, I’ve had the pleasure of visiting stadiums and watching football in over a dozen (and counting) different countries, and the most memorable moments I have witnessed at games have been off the pitch.

I have seen thousands of Hibernian fans jumping in unison while singing their hearts out at an away European tie while 8-0 down on aggregate, 70,000 fans erupt in joy as Bruno Fernandes scored a late penalty against Nottingham Forest to complete an improbable 3-2 comeback, Spurs fans singing late into the night at Camp Nou after scoring a last-gasp equaliser against Barcelona to send them through to the Champions League knockout rounds.

From the hallowed grounds of Old Trafford to the waterlogged pitch at Toa Payoh Stadium, whenever I go to a game I usually spend a good chunk of time observing the hardcore fans rather than watching the football itself, because the fan culture makes all the difference in a matchday experience.

Over the course of this ACL campaign, I also had the privilege of attending all 3 LCS away games with the Crew. I travelled to Hong Kong as one of the winners of the contest held by the club, and to South Korea and Thailand on my own to meet up with the Crew over there. I think all those who travelled to our away games can agree that we have taken valuable lessons from watching fans of other clubs and countries in action, and we wanted to take what we learnt and apply it to the SPL because we realized it’s not just about the football, but the quality of fan culture in Singapore as well.

Saying Annyeong to Anyang

In today’s article, I am taking you to our second ACL trip in Korea. Not to the Jeonbuk game (that 3-0 loss has since become a repressed memory buried deep in my consciousness), but to Anyang, a city just south of Seoul with a population of 600,000.

A few of us extended our trip after the ACL game and were staying in Seoul for the weekend. Being football fans, we naturally wanted to check out the local league. I remember being a little bummed that there were no other K League 1 games near Seoul that Saturday, so after a bit of research we “settled” on watching K League 2 (the second tier of Korean football) instead, as there was a game at Anyang which is about a 45-minute subway ride away.

As we made our way to Anyang Stadium on match day, I was not expecting much from the game. For context, Anyang were playing against Seoul E-land FC at the tail-end of the K League 2 season. Both teams had hardly anything to play for, at best Anyang had an outside chance of making the promotion playoffs if they won all their remaining games and a bunch of other results went their way. In essence, this game was pretty much a dead rubber and I was expecting perhaps a few hundred fans, a small stadium, a flat atmosphere. Never have I been so wrong.

Matchday

As we walked up to the main gate of Anyang stadium, we saw the first signs that we were in for a special matchday experience as we were greeted by a wave of purple everywhere, the home colours of Anyang FC. Right beside the stadium entrance was a well-stocked merchandise booth and a ticketing counter fully decked in purple, with hundreds of fans in their purple home jerseys getting ready to enter the stadium.

After taking some time to sort out our tickets and raid the merchandise booth, we walked through the entrance gate and were greeted by two giant inflatable mascots in sight just beyond the gates dressed in the home jersey.

The first surprise was the atmosphere that we immediately felt once we entered the stadium. It didn’t feel just a football game – it felt more like some sort of festival. Anyang Stadium was not a ‘proper’ football stadium, so it also had running tracks along the perimeter of the pitch. However, stands were built on the running tracks along the two long sides of the pitch for fans to be closer to the action, and the remaining area of the running tracks housed the giant mascots, food trucks, and an area for kids to play some football-related games. It seemed like a perfect way for friends and families to spend a Saturday evening. We took some photos, got some fried chicken from one of the food trucks, and settled down into our seats to soak it all in.

The next surprise came as we approached kick-off. Like many of the clubs in Korea, Anyang had a pre-game song they would play on the big screens before the players came out of the tunnel. Just as the music started blaring on the speakers, the stand holding the Anyang ultras sprang into life. Dozens of flags waving in unison, coordinated hand actions, and passionate singing – was this a meaningless league game or a Cup final? That was when we knew we were in for a special night of football.

The Anyang ultras would keep their cheering going throughout the game, and away from the ultras, cheerleaders lined up along the front of other stands to try to get the crowd to sing along.

Despite the surprisingly high level of football on display, the first half was frustratingly void of any major chances for either side, with the highlight of the half being an enthusiastic local fan sitting beside us educating us on the history of Anyang FC. Anyang FC was a relatively new club founded 10 years ago, and before Anyang FC existed, the Anyang stadium was occupied by its predecessor, the Anyang LG Cheetahs. Apparently, due to political / financial reasons, LG moved the Anyang LG Cheetahs away from Anyang to the Seoul World Cup Stadium in the early 2000s to form the team that we now know as FC Seoul. This left a sour taste in the mouth of some Anyang residents / fans who to this day hold a grudge against the powers that be for moving the Cheetahs out of their home city.

[Editor’s note – that was a very long way of saying some guy in the stands told us repeatedly “F*ck LG! Tell all your friends, F*ck LG!” He also asked me to whip out my phone and then said “Samsung? Good, good” before finishing with his trademark phrase, which you should know by now.]

Lessons from Anyang and Beyond

So, why write about a story of a K League 2 match of all things? Well, apart from the fact that I had an incredible time travelling with the Crew (check out Ernest’s recent article for a rundown of our shenanigans in Korea), what transpired at Anyang Stadium really got us thinking about how much more we can do (both the club and the fans) for the growth of fan culture in Singapore. The fact that Anyang is closer to home in Asia, and not in the top tier league in their country, somehow made all this feel a little more achievable as well.

Many of the things we observed in Korea can easily be ported over in some form to LCS and the Crew, and most importantly, some of these ideas are low-hanging fruits that don’t require significant investment.

Cheering Culture

The match attendance on that night in Anyang was around 3000 people. While we don’t usually get this level of attendance at a typical SPL game, some of the more important league games and ACL fixtures have come close to this level of attendance. However, the atmosphere we experienced in the stadium was beyond what any of us had seen and felt locally in recent times, mainly because such a large proportion of the fans in the stands were singing and cheering along throughout the game.

In Singapore, more often than not we see cheering fans form a relative minority of the fans in attendance, with the fans only uniting in contentious moments of the game to shout a few choice words, sometimes questioning the referee’s lineage, or at other times suggesting that an opposing player has an innate propensity to participate in aquatic sports.

After taking some time to observe the Anyang fans in action, it seems that certain arrangements were made with the clear purpose of encouraging fans and making it easy for them to participate in the cheering – The timings of cheers and songs seemed to have somehow been coordinated with the club such that the lyrics to the pre-game song and cheers during the game were all displayed on the big screen, making it very easy to follow along. Everything down to timing of the hand actions and claps were clearly displayed on screen each time the Ultras started a cheer, and the resulting coordination of singing and hand/flag movements was mesmerizing, even as someone watching Anyang for the first time you couldn’t help but join in.

This is something we can easily do over at Bishan stadium. There is a pre-game video that always plays at every home game before kick-off, perhaps with lyrics incorporated we can have a dedicated pre-game song to sing before the game just to get the crowd warmed up? With some coordination, maybe the lyrics of some cheers can be displayed on the screen just as the Crew starts the cheer? Perhaps we can design simple coordinated clapping or movements to be part of each song/cheer to help get fans excited to join in the cheering?

Not everyone goes to a football game to cheer and sing, and that’s perfectly fine. Some fans may just want to observe tactical nuances on the pitch, some others could be sitting on the edge of their seats with a Singapore Pools AOS betslip in hand. What the above measures can provide is to lower the barrier to make it much easier for those who are on the fence to join in, perhaps because they previously didn’t know the lyrics to a particular cheer, or because they are simply not used to cheering.

Other than concrete actions that we can take as fans, there are also a few other ideas that the club and authorities could consider to make attending a matchday more attractive.

Peripheral Activities on Matchday

One of the main highlights of the Anyang matchday experience was the abundance of peripheral activities to engage fans coming to games. These included food trucks, mascots, and games for children, all of which turn a football match into a family activity where fans can easily spend a whole weekend afternoon at the stadium with their kids. This encourages fans to turn up early to a game to create a festival-like atmosphere, and at the same time sowing the seeds for a whole new generation of local football fans.

This may be something for the club to consider, though I suppose this is dependent on attendance numbers which would in turn dictate the willingness of sponsors/vendors to participate on a matchday. This season we already had a pizza food truck, a stall for snacks and drinks outside stadium, as well as a beer counter inside the stadium. Could there be room for more food trucks parked along the road outside Bishan stadium on matchday? Could the ActiveSG futsal pitches across the road be made available for kids to have a kickabout before the game? There are many other such possibilities to make full use of the surrounding infrastructure to create some buzz in the area on matchday.

Fan Engagement

During the half-time break at the Anyang game, we saw that barricades were put up just outside the Anyang dressing room, and dozens of Anyang fans, mostly kids, lined up along the barrier to welcome the Anyang players back onto the pitch for the second half. A few players on who were on the bench also stopped to have a quick chat with a few of the kids on the way back onto the dugout.

This may seem like a rather trivial occurrence, but it just serves to highlight the importance of fan engagement. While it does not have to be in the form of a makeshift tunnel to welcome players out of the dressing room, fan engagement at some level is critical to any club’s success.

Improving the attendance of the SPL requires 2 questions to be addressed – how to get fans to turn up to the stadium for their first game, and how to get them to keep coming back. Fan engagement is a very important tool that the club can use to keep enfranchised fans coming back for more.

At LCS games we often see players who are not in the matchday squad interacting with fans outside the stadium and in the stands. After games, players coming out of the locker rooms also spend time taking photos with fans before leaving the stadium. I think these actions are very important in keeping fans engaged (and credit to the club/players for making the effort), but what would be good to see is a more organized approach of involving fans in various activities.

One such example was in 2022, when LCS season ticket holders were invited to a tour of the new training centre at Mattar Road, and I remember being impressed not just with the training facility itself, but also how so many of the club staff enthusiastically came forward to interact with fans and answer questions throughout the tour. Another one was the contests organized by the club for each of the ACL away games to bring 10 fans on an all-expenses paid trip to the game, though obviously the number of fans who can be involved here is very limited due to the costs involved. We have already seen the club plan such activities in the past few years, and it would be great to see a concerted effort to organize similar activities in the coming season as well, outside of an actual matchday, that will make fans feel like they are part of the family.

Conclusion

At Anyang, the action on the pitch was of amazing quality, but it was the peripheral activities off the pitch that gave the group of us so many things to think about. Our main takeaway was that so much more can be done, not just by the clubs and authorities, but more importantly by us as fans to improve the overall atmosphere and quality of the SPL experience.

As the club strives to compete against the best in Asia on the pitch, we can also make efforts off the pitch the lift our standards as fans as well. Before setting sail again in the 2024/25 season, perhaps as fans of Sailors and Singapore football we can look to these other footballing communities and seek to bring and adapt some of the positives into our local game.

If my groundhopping experiences have taught me anything, it is that the overall quality of the local league is closer than we think to other countries and every bit of support helps.

Written by Tan Chin Heng

Edited by Eddy Hirono

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