| |
| |
 |
| |
|
| |
|
| |
|
VIENTIANE (Laos) - The Singapore under-23 team were backed into a corner on Friday. Threatening howls sent some of the 20-man squad sprinting from the Singapore Recovery Centre to the SEA Games Village a few hundred metres down the road here in Vientiane.
Skipper Isa Halim showed off his whirring feet, leading from the front, and goalkeeper Hyrulnizam Juma'at admitted having contemplated negotiating the Games Village fence that stood between them and safety. Never mind that the dogs in question were being taunted by some other playful members of the Singapore squad and were not exactly rabid beasts - the stray dogs did not even rise from their slumber, save to howl.
Isa and Hyrulnizam showed just how much they will do when backed into a corner, and that bodes well for the team who open their campaign in the 25th SEA Games here on Saturday against Indonesia.
Born in 1986, Isa and Hyrulnizam are two of the four players in the squad - along with Firdaus Idros and Shaiful Esah - for whom this adventure in Laos will be their Games' swansong.
Speaking to MediaCorp at the athletes' village on Friday, they vowed to make the most of their last shot at glory.
"The coach has said that there are only five games standing between us and Singapore's first gold in football," said Home United midfielder Firdaus, who has one tournament under his belt.
"We want to win every game here."
Sitting upright with a dead-serious look on his face, Isa's eyes gleamed when told that a spot in final would already put this team in the same bracket as Singapore legends like Fandi Ahmad and his current coaches, Tambiah Pathmanathan and V Sundramoorthy, who have won silver at this competition, the best the Republic have achieved since the inaugural Games in 1959.
"It would be an absolute honour to have our names mentioned alongside those players. I never thought about it that way before but, yes, it is definitely a driving force," said the 23-year-old.
SAFFC fullback Shaiful may have already written himself into Singapore folklore with a peach of a corner that saw Aleksandar Duric score the winner against Thailand (1-0) in an Asian Cup qualifier in Bangkok last month, breaking the 34-year run without victory on Thai soil, but the SEA Games is special to him.
"These Games are no less satisfying a competition. There's a medal that you can show to your children in the future, and you're playing for your country and its pride," he said.
Isa and Shaiful already have a bronze medal in their trophy cabinet, but if the skipper's reaction when backed into a corner is anything to go by, there might be another medal on the way. Said Shaiful ,with a laugh: "Really, the stray dogs didn't even move, they just sat there howling, but you should have seen Isa run."
The team are the youngest Singapore have selected in the history of the Games, with an average age of 19.8 years.
Few give the side a chance of gold, but the boys are taking it one game at a time.
But backed into a corner, these youngsters may well bite back. - TODAY
|
