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New FAS Council must listen more to local football community: SportsSG chief Lim

SINGAPORE - When the Footbal Association of Singapore’s landmark elections come to an end on Saturday (April 29), and a new council is selected, the sport’s new leaders will have to spend the next four years listening more to the local football community, and considering their views and inputs before making decisions about the sport.

SportSG CEO Lim Teck Yin says that the new FAS Council must listen more to the local football community. TODAY FILE PHOTO

SportSG CEO Lim Teck Yin says that the new FAS Council must listen more to the local football community. TODAY FILE PHOTO

SINGAPORE - When the Football Association of Singapore’s landmark elections come to an end on Saturday (April 29), and a new council is selected, the sport’s new leaders will have to spend the next four years listening more to the local football community, and considering their views and inputs before making decisions about the sport.

So said Sport Singapore (SportSG) chief executive officer Lim Teck Yin on Thursday (April 27) when asked for his thoughts on the upcoming elections.

While Lim declined to comment directly on the FAS elections, and the controversies it has generated, he said: “Everyone has a view on this, it is their right to hold different views.

“I think the new council should listen very carefully to different voices and see how they can come up with strategies and plans to serve the wider community of football fans, teams, as well as put in place a sustained programme to build a strong pipeline for the national team.

“What the community has signaled is they would like to be able to give their input. I think that’s being taken on board.

“But always, listening to a wider range of input is useful to making the tough decisions.”

Lim was speaking on the sidelines of the launch of the Standard Chartered Singapore Marathon at the Marina Bay Sands.

Culture, Community and Youth Minister Grace Fu, who was also at the event, declined comment when approached by TODAY.

Local football has been plagued by controversy for the past two weeks after Hougang United chairman Bill Ng, who is leading Team Game Changers for the FAS elections, said at a press conference that he had donated S$850,000 to the FAS..

Ng’s revelation resulted in a public spat between him and FAS general secretary Winston Lee during which it was revealed that S$500,000 of the S$850,000 went to the Asean Football Federation to support its Football Management System. Ng insisted that Lee had requested the donation, instead of former FAS president Zainuddin Nordin as stated by Lee, and this led to Lee producing documents showing the correspondence between former Member of Parliament Zainudin and Ng about the donation to the AFF.

Following that, SportSG lodged a police report on April 19 over the suspected misuse of funds at Tiong Bahru Football Club, an amateur club that Ng owns, and “a purported attempt” by a senior officer of the club - believed to be Ng - to “delay and/or obstruct the completion of audits into the S.League sit-out clubs”.

This resulted in the Commercial Affairs Department (CAD) conducting raids on the clubhouses of TBFC, Hougang United and Woodlands Wellington, as well as the FAS headquarters at Jalan Besar.

Zainudin, who is also a former Member of Parliament, Ng and his wife Bonnie Wong, and Lee were later called in for questioning. They were then arrested, and are out on police bail.

Despite the upheaval in the sport, the elections will continue as planned on Saturday, where 44 FAS affiliates will vote for their leaders for the next four years. Ng’s team will face Team LKT led by former FAS vice-president Lim Kia Tong.

Apart from the FAS, other national sports associations such as Singapore Athletics and the Singapore Table Tennis Association have hogged the limelight in recent months for the wrong reasons. Issues they have been mired in include infighting among elected officials, and disagreements with athletes

However, Lim said that these incidents are not reflective of the state of Singapore’s 64 NSAs.

He said: “From time to time, we do see NSAs having problems internally. We always encourage our NSAs to sort these problems out for the better of the community.

“I don’t think we should generalise that our NSAs are all poorly managed. The vast majority of them are doing a good job and are trying to serve their communities the best they can.

“News is news, but by and large our NSAs know what they have to do and they are trying their best to do a good job.”

Another NSA, Singapore Athletics is also headed for the polls just 10 months after the new team was elected into office. Disagreements and in-fighting among its Executive Committee members has led to the association calling for an extraordinary general meeting (EOGM) and snap elections on May 5 to elect new leaders. Last October, the STTA also came under fire for its decision to axe top paddler Feng Tianwei from the national team. It had cited team rejuvenation as reasons for the decision, but it later emerged that Feng was sacked after a number of run-ins and disagreements with the STTA. 

Weighing in on the rifts in the Singapore Athletics Ex-Co, Lim said: “In the very beginning, I told the president of Singapore Athletics (Ho Mun Cheong) that we look forward to a cohesive athletics community and committee because the plans we need to put in place are multi-year plans. They are not plans that can afford to change every year, every 10 months, so he understands that message quite clearly.

“I hope in the coming EOGM, Singapore Athletics will do the right thing to ensure continuity of plans that have already started.”

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