Whoo HOO!! What A match! ha! Singapore Slingers 91 and Darwin All-Stars 68….. hahaha That’s the final score for the basketball match that I just watched today!
HA,what a great experience it was, the match was my first ever professional basketball match that I watched LIVE in person MAN!!.
Despite the low attendance at the Singapore Indoor Stadium, I was quite surprised that the atmosphere was still pretty happening. There were people cheering, clapping, pushing the team on and I think that about 60% of the crowd were Caucasians. So, I’m not even sure which team were they cheering on… hahahaha as you see, all the 10 man on the court, none of them were Singaporean, they are all foreigners and even the 2nd team were all foreigners. For the Singapore Slingers, is only when you come to the 11th man then he is a Singaporean!!
Well, nothing wrong with that, but as the first Singapore’s professional Basketball team, I do hoped to see some local breed in the team. Ha and of course, I’m aware that to assemble a team of Singaporean it is easier said than done. In fact it is the same situation for most of the team sports in Singapore, there are just not enough local talent to go around.
Firstly, I want to confess that, I don’t even know much about Singapore Slingers other than the fact that they were formed in 2006/07 to be the first Asean-based team in the Australia National Basketball League (ANBL). I have to admit that if it is not because of the free ticket that was given by my boss and my interests in Basketball(the B-ball is my fav. sports game), I will not even go a match like this.
I’m guilty as such, that I’m one of the lot that doesn’t really support the local sports scene. Other than the national team news on table-tennis, bowling, badminton and the Singapore Lions(soccer), I hardly pay any attention to the local sports scene. I was more interested in the Barclay Premier league than the S-league!!.
The reasons of having no interest in them are mainly, because that I don’t even care and I deem that the sports standard here are just not good enough for me to support. Ya, I know, who am I to make such a comment, I wasn’t even a school team player of any sports lack alone being a national player.
Well, it is just that there are really nothing much for me to support them….. at least that was how I thought in the past. However, after today’s experience in the Singapore Indoor Stadium, something just struck me. I was like “Hey! The Slingers are no so bad after all, they are pretty entertaining, how come I never ever thought of coming to watch and support this team, based on the way they played, they really deserved some support.”
It made me realised that it is so common and easy for people to condemn the local sports scene, and there are really not many local sports supporter around. Come to think of it, if there are not many people supporting the local sports, how can the local sports scene grows? If we still behave like the past, waiting for the quality to come and then support(which I’m equally guilty of), I can bet that the local sports scene will never grow.
So, I guess it is time for me to change side from being a non-local sports supporter to a local sports support. As today, I felt the same adrenalin rush that I get from cheering the Singapore Lions when I was cheering for the Singapore Slingers. The feeling is the same, it is a feeling of national pride especially when you heard the word “Singapore”.
From now, I am even more convinced that I will give the local support more support then before. Regardless of the nationality of the players, as long as they are donning the national colours of Singapore, I will continue to support them. It is time to give our sportsmen and sportswomen the support they needed so that, they can draw more encourage and motivation from us rather than the pressure and stress from wanting them to prove their worth first before we support them. As now I believed that if there are more fans around then the players will have more things to fight for other than the prize and glory.
So 加油! Li JiaWei (Table-Tennis Singapore National , China-Born), Ronald Susilo (Badminton Singapore National, Indonesia-Born), Shi Jia Yi(Soccer, Singapore Lions, China-Born) and the lastest Darren Ng (BasketBall, Singapore Slingers- Australia-Borned) Make Singapore Proud and hopefully, because of your success, more Singaporean will support and enter the national local sports scene!
Recent Comments