Thursday, August 19, 2004
Big Match Mentality

What is it with Singaporean sportsmen anyway?One minute,we have completely no expectations of them and then they come up with a big performance against a brand-name opponent and raise our hopes skyhigh...only to crash these hopes with an inept performance against supposedly easier opponents.What I can only dub as the Big Match Mentality syndrome where they put in great performances against difficult opponents but can't muster the same amount of commitment against lesser known opposition.Ronald Susilo,take a bow.Before you,of course,there is the brilliant national football team,a bunch of overpaid jokers who'd lose 0-7 to the Philippines one of these days.

I can't blame Ronald Susilo for his failure actually.It's the media's fault for hyping him up after his stupendous victory against world number 1,Lin Dan.Suddenly everyone is syaing that Susilo will be our medal hope for the first time in a loooong time,since Tan Howe Liang,indeed,who's has the misfortune of being our only Olympics medal winner so that he can brought out,dusted clean and made to be a shining model of sporting excellence once every four years.For goodness sake,the man is a living legend,literally...so give him a break and stop remembering him only once every four years.How many four years does he have left?Let him have a peaceful life and accord him the respect he deserves.Not some shining Olympic mascot.

Going back to Susilo,I say congratulations that you actually got past Lin Dan and got to the quarters.I think that's good enough.Before and after he beat Lin,I never did fancy him to win a medal,even a bronze.It's good enough he got so far.Too often,local sportsmen have delivered the big kill when the chips are down to raise hopes to skyhigh levels.Only for them to lack the mental toughness and consistency to go beyond that to win anthing.Just like the England football team.Just like the Singapore football team too like I previously mentioned.Remember the score: Singapore 1 Japan 2.A team containing Hidetoshi Nakata,Junichi Inamoto,Shunsuke Nakamura and Naohiro Takahara...and we held them to just 2-1 when everyone expected us to get a roasting.The hopes of a nations wnet skyhigh.WE ARE GETTING THERE.WE WILL BE A SOUTHEAST ASIAN POWERHOUSES AGAIN.Roll forward time and drumrolls...can't get through to the ASEAN Games football semi-finals and the historic score; Oman 7 Singapore 0.It's the weather really.No,lads,it's YOU.How would you like it if you went back to your $500 a month job delivering pizzas instead of your $3000 job playing football in a league funded by the common taxpayers' money?Morons.

Ronald,it's ok,it's ok.We still love you.Alas,it's not that long ago when I posted a blog on why "Woman is the future of man".In Singapore,at least that's very true.Li Jiawei and Zhang Xueling(both China-born lasses by the way)are now our only medal winning hopes.So our best medal hopes again rests on the womanfolk of this island.Take a bow,ladies,I salute all of you...although honestly I have a deep suspicion both won't make it to the semis(the women sporting folk on our tiny island is quite different,they usually thrash the easy opponents and lose only to brand-name opponents.So weird.),best of luck to the two of them anyway.They'd need it.To the male sporting fraternity,I have a suggestion.Stick to bodybuilding or bowling.Why?It seems we have a big bunch of macho posers amongst our sportsmen(especially kudos to all our male model-swimmers(Leslie Kwok,Mark Chay and company)...how come Jos Yeo never gets to model despite getting more gold medals than all our male swimmers COMBINED) and bodybuilding is just for you,you do nothing but pose anyway.As for bowling,well,any dork should be able to do that well...except me.