Football may be a popular sport but for some schools like St Joseph's Institution and Raffles Institution, that is not a good enough reason to have a football Co-Curricular Activity (CCA).
I know who started the fight with Jordan. But I'm not telling you. If you're wondering what I'm talking about, there was a fight after the game between Singapore and Jordan at the National Stadium. Singapore beat Jordan 2-1 to get their Asian Cup qualifying campaign back on track while the loss condemned Jordan to the bottom of the table with only one point.
Most zonal and national championships will be over by May 2009. So what do student athletes do for the rest of the year? Just study?
The ASEAN Football Championship (AFF Suzuki Cup) is a tournament best played on a home-and-away format over the course of a few months because to cram seven games (and only for the eventual finalists) in the space of three weeks just says to sponsor Suzuki, "Thanks for your money but we can only give you three weeks of returns in the media."
Perhaps the Singapore Sports Council, which runs all the stadium in Singapore, should consider banning the use of air horns at the National Stadium. It might save us some national embarrassment in the future.
We obviously have a lunatic fringe among the football crowd whose highest desire on game day is to go to the National Stadium and take part in collective stupidity with their own kind.
When your team wins a game, you leave the stadium in a good mood, talking with your friends, minding your business while making you way to the MRT to get home. The last thing you expect is to get physically attacked just for the colour of your jersey. That's what happened to 29-year-old Nguyen (he declined to reveal his full name for fear of reprisals), his wife and eight other friends.