Attacking football flows in triangles we must build

Posted on August 28, 2017 by icedwater

ST Forum letter: Good coach, marketing are what local football needs. Chan Siang Ming, July 27 2017

So I wanted to reply to this letter on the day it was published, but life got in the way. ST Forums have an exclusivity clause which expires if they don’t contact you after five working days, which I can safely say have passed, which means here is my reply, which hasn’t been substantively changed by the intervening SEA Games and friendly results:

 

I agree with Mr. Chan’s assertion (Good coach, marketing are what local football needs) that more needs to be done to promote local football. The fact that fans had to choose between Chelsea vs Bayern and Home United vs Warriors on the same night is a planning catastrophe that could have been avoided.

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More support, less hate, for Singapore Sports

Posted on August 16, 2016 by icedwater

I was recently reminded of my tweet in response to the @hellofrmSG on 9th August (at the time, it was someone else, not whoever you see in the card above, it changes every week) after our table-tennis loss in the Olympics.

There’s an imgur entry making the rounds on Facebook that looks like a damning comparison of how Singapore treats home-grown sporting talents. I’m not going to show it, but you’ve probably already seen it.

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don’t bash it until you’ve tried it

Posted on August 8, 2016 by icedwater

I’d heard about the new Bash subsystem in Windows before, and my reaction was the same as when I tweeted about a blog post detailing a step-by-step procedure.

(a reference to “embrace, extend, and extinguish” , in case you don’t already know that.)

I’ll update this post as I follow the blogged process… Continue reading →

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Raising Singapore’s football standards

Posted on May 9, 2016 by icedwater
We had youth teams before. Not too long ago...

NFA U-16? vs Tanjong Pagar United. I don’t remember what youth tournament this was, probably the COE Challenge Cup.

So one of my Facebook friends shared this blog post on how to improve Singapore’s football standards written on June 27th 2015. I’d wanted to reply on July 1st 2015, but I clearly got distracted and left this as a draft for the longest time.

In case the writer, Darren C, still believes the same things, here are my responses: Keep the S.League; forget the ASL; and focus on the local first.

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Embedding subtitles in videos

Posted on December 18, 2015 by icedwater

A friend of mine asked on Facebook if it were possible to add subtitles into a video, and I felt VLC would be the best tool for this. But I didn’t know quite how it should be done. So I looked for a short video I had downloaded that would be nice to test this with, and tried it out… Continue reading →

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MOU development goals: missed?

Posted on June 14, 2015 by icedwater
Nobody bothered or wanted to fix this

Since 2013: LionsXII are not the Young Lions are not the Courts Young Lions are not Singapore

When I first heard of the MOU signed by our FA and the Malaysian FA in 2011 in the name of development, I was a little cautious. Then I complained about our our fixation on the Malaysia Cup and how doing well there might not correspond with success on a greater stage.

Under their first head coach V. Sundramoorthy, the LionsXII won the Malaysian Super League (MSL) in 2013, and enjoyed successful runs in the Malaysia Cup. Their home stadium, Jalan Besar, was inhospitable for visiting teams, and the King George Stand — specially built for this club — sparked many a cheer thanks to the likes of the raucous ExcluSinga.

While the LionsXII grew from strength to strength, the Singapore side notched their names on the AFF Suzuki Cup for a record fourth time, beating Thailand 3-2 on aggregate in the final. It would be a fitting farewell to the then national coach Radojko Avramovic.

So maybe I was proven wrong. So maybe the LionsXII weren’t such a bad thing after all? (Never mind that when V. Sundramoorthy took over as caretaker national coach, we lost comprehensively to Jordan.) Continue reading →

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Ping

Posted on December 10, 2014 by icedwater

Just realised my last post was at the beginning of the season with Cottbus 3-1 win at Osnabrück.

Now VfL have thrown away a 2-0 lead at the start of the second phase to gift Energie Cottbus a 2-2 draw, and the year is almost over.

Time is running out if I’m to put something up at Interspeech 2015, Dresden… 20 March 2015 is the deadline. Just reminding myself out here. And given that the bulk of January will be gone, time is indeed tight.

Tick tock.

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Cottbus sweep Osnabrueck aside 3-1

Posted on July 27, 2014 by icedwater

Had some help from Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung and Goal.com Tanzania (oddly enough) as I wrote this practice piece for VfL’s opening-day home loss to Energie Cottbus. Comments always appreciated. Continue reading →

Posted in Football, Just Me, VfL Osnabrück | Leave a comment

Much-needed pit stop

Posted on March 24, 2014 by icedwater

It’s been a comfortable off day for me from ICT, probably enough of a recharge to get back to work in good form. There’s a lot of work waiting, and the range of projects approaching will be quite the challenge. Even though they are essentially the same main projects I was working on before this enforced break, having been away for two weeks means they will be as good as completely new tasks.

I should probably get to sleep soon; I haven’t felt this rested in a long time and I don’t think I want to lose it.

Oh, and by the way, I’ll be manning comms for @hellofrmsg next weekend. So excited 🙂

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We are all Anton Casey

Posted on January 26, 2014 by icedwater

To be honest, I didn’t really pay attention to the whole scandal till way after the “WANKER Special” photo made its rounds on Twitter. And then I maybe only looked at it once or twice or listened while people were making loud noises about “the bloody ang moh”. So he has been fired from his firm, and won himself even more attention over several pages in the Straits Times: 2,3 and 35 (screenshot of the digital version featured below.)

But why are we “all” Anton Casey? Every now and then, we let slip a remark that is utterly insensitive to another group of people. Sometimes we mean it, sometimes it’s just a poorly-considered knee-jerk reaction. Either way, we may have to regret it later on.

But we should really be reflecting as well.

St. Anton paid the price so that we may all learn to be tolerant of every expat

Continue reading →

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