SINGAPORE — Having spent close to six hours at the Football Association of Singapore (FAS) elections followed by a post-victory press conference, it was no wonder that members of Team LKT were exhausted as proceedings drew to a close on Saturday (April 29).

But Singapore football’s new leadership led by Lim Kia Tong, who beat Team Game Changers 30-13 in the landmark elections, did not take the rest of the day off.

Instead, the six key exco members – president Lim, deputy president Bernard Tan and vice-presidents Edwin Tong, Teo Hock Seng, Razali Saad and S. Thavaneson – immediately adjourned from the Black Box auditorium to the Fun Toast outlet at the nearby Kallang Wave Mall to get right down to work.

Over a 45-min long coffee and toast session, they set out the formative steps of their reign and arranged for a first council meeting on Tuesday evening. Tong told TODAY that the team has identified two key areas as priorities: Governance and structure.

“We talked about a couple of things…in broad strokes, rather than details,” said Tong. “Essentially, it is firstly to devise ways in which we can review the governance, both internally in FAS as well as externally of the affiliates.”

This comes in the wake of a saga involving a S$500,000 donation that Bill Ng, leader of Game Changers, made from his club Tiong Bahru FC (TBFC) to the ASEAN Football Federation (AFF) through the FAS, in the buildup to election day. The amount passed through FAS without the previous council – of whom Tong, Lim, Tan, Razali and Thavaneson were part of – knowing, highlighting worrying gaps in accountability.

This problem was acknowledged by Team LKT after their victory and Tong indicated that an ad hoc committee is likely to be set up to look into this area.

“You don’t need to have a standing committee for governance, but we thought we should have an ad hoc one, maybe even comprising people from outside FAS, so that there are no blind spots, to come in and put up a report and review our processes,” he said.

Changes will be made to the current FAS structure, which is modelled after that of world governing body FIFA, after a review. These will be aimed at adapting the sub-committees to better suit local football’s needs and achieve targets in their manifesto, such as high performance objectives for the national teams.

“Over the last two or three years, three of us (Lim, Tan, Tong) felt that having been in the previous council, we didn’t think that the same structure would (still) be useful,” Tong said. “The big ticket items will stand out – the S.League will have one (sub-committee), youth football one, women’s football another, then of course the NFL and other affiliates.

“We have a fair idea on where we want to end up after Tuesday, but we need to discuss it with the whole council, get buy-in, then we move on from there (and make decisions).”

With many looking to the new council to boost the fortunes of the Lions, newly-elected vice-president Razali Sa’ad believes they have to get youth and grassroots football right in order for the national teams to progress.

“We have to go down deep into how we start, how we build the grassroots, and how we bring them up to the next level - the youth, the national level,” he said. “For that to happen, we must have the whole community to support us, the finance, the budget, the facilities, these are all the whole network that we need to work together.

“People want to see (results) - even if we do it right administratively as an organisation, but the team doesn’t reach the ultimate things or targets, then it doesn’t look right. If the ecosystem is right from grassroots (level onwards), I think we should have the results.”

The new FAS council will also meet all current FAS staff – around 90 of them – for an appreciation lunch on Tuesday.

“We wanted to do a nice thank-you lunch,” added Tong. “Just to see all the staff and get a sense of where they are.”

However, no decisions on any staff’s future, including that of general secretary Winston Lee, will be made on the same day, as it is “too soon”. Lee is part of an ongoing police investigation into the donation saga, having been arrested and then released on police bail along with former FAS president Zainudin Nordin, Ng and Ng’s wife Bonnie Wong.

“First of all we need to review the structures and see who fits where, then we need to see where we need help and shore things up,” said Tong. “Thirdly, to be fair, there is an investigation that is ongoing and while it is separate from his job, in some ways it is also linked, so I think we cannot act too quickly and we have to be fair to everyone.

“These are key appointments – general secretary, S.League CEO – so we do need to think about it quite carefully.”

With well wishes and volunteers offering to step forward to help Singapore football, including members from Game Changers, Tong described the mood among the team as one of optimism, even as they prepare to tackle the many challenges that await in their quest to lift the local game.

“It’s a sign that a lot of the community accept our message that we should now come together as one and move forward,” he said.

“It’s a daunting task but at the same time exciting… We also realise that it’s a very important and serious job that is very broad, so we can’t lose time in starting (work).”