Give foreign-born athletes a break
I AM appalled by the persistent focus on the issue of foreign sports talents versus local.
When foreign-born athletes win trophies and bring glory to our country, we question their ‘Singaporeanness’ and we do not feel proud of their achievements. When they do not perform, we criticise their ability, send them home, and question the whole idea of the Foreign Sports Talent (FST) scheme.
Surely, we should not be so narrow-minded and goal-oriented.
We have to look at the FST scheme in a broader perspective – that of promoting sports – instead of focusing on ‘passport for medals’. As a Chinese saying goes, winning and losing are part and parcel of competitions; you win some, you lose some. How can we expect our foreign-born athletes to be in top form for every competition, and be medal-generating machines all the time?
While our foreign-born athletes may not be winning medals every time, when they train and practise in Singapore alongside Singapore-born athletes, they would raise the level and standard of play.
And if their presence has inspired and motivated Singapore-born athletes to perform better than them, this would be considered mission accomplished by the Singapore Sports Council.
The media should focus more on reporting good sportsmanship instead of putting unnecessary pressure on the athletes, and exaggerating the ‘great divide’ between them (foreign-born) and us (Singapore-born).
Loh Ka Wai
Funny. If it’s all about ‘we win some, we lose some’, then just let local Singaporeans with their dismal standards go and compete, right? Not to mention, are there no other better and more economical methods to promote sports? It’s simply that ‘su bway ki’ (can’t afford to lose) and ‘everything we must be number-one’ attitude that resulted in this (in my considered opinion) completely money and time wasting ‘Foreign Sports Talent’ (FST) scheme.
Above which, it isn’t really true that to have them practise in Singapore alongside our athletes, it would raise the level and standard of play. Why can’t we just arrange for friendlies for our players with overseas ones? Doesn’t it serve the same purpose as well. Is the FST really necessary in that case?
Sure, there is a possibility that our players may reach a certain percentage of the standard of the ‘imported’ foreign players, but the foreign players may as well just never improve because they are always playing against mediocres! And that is perhaps evident in why they at times looked promising and then suddenly crash out of the competition with big losses when our hopes are high! Have these foreigners really motivated our players, or have our dismal standards here destroyed the talent, if he / she is one to begin with?
In fact, I suspect that even if we managed to buy the entire Brazil Soccer Team over, we might not get the World Cup anyway. Surely, they will probably keep trashing our local Ass-League teams. But then they probably trash them so often they start to think they are so damned talented and invincible and they start slacking on training. Will the Brazil Soccer Team still be the team we original bought?
We might perhaps even do better saving that money and help our low income group instead after all, the glory from these athletic achievements are only fleeting. We should stop believing that our nation’s hard earned collective wealth can allow us to just buy just about anything.
Perhaps, the Cut Waste Committee should look into cutting these un-necessary expenditure, along with the elected President, MM and SM posts, and those un-necessary campaigns like ‘Speak Mandarin’, ‘Speak Good English’ and ‘4 Million Smiles’, to help the country save some money.
I suspect with all that cuts, we might even save enough money to help us cut 1% from the GST raise too!
How is the Christmas lightup funded? Who is paying?
And does it generate enough revenue to justify its existence?
Do you know?
I would include also the NMPs to be recommended to the cut loss committee. If they have so much ‘useful’ things to say, then run as an independent or for the opposition parties. An ‘MP’ that is not elected has no weight, since he doesn’t represent anybody.
Chinese team…
The Chinese was near the bottom of the S-League at one point. I think we were teaching them something rather than them teaching us….
By the way, I have seen Zhang Yining play in real life. Sometimes, she is so fast that you can’t see her hand! It’s a blur…
Did you know that in women’s table tennis, the selection committee did look at Zhang Yining but instead chose Li Jiawei. Heh.
Of course, the committee couldn’t have known…
Incidentally, why has the S-League got some Chinese and Japanese team now? Are they any good? Who pays their salaries?
What? No mention of the civil service raise and the extra bonus they are getting? No cheers or jeers for these, ahem, faithful, patriotic, committed and hardworking servants of the state?
A museum for the ‘elitists’ too.. starring Wee Shu Min… and the Hall of Shame should include the TaliPAP clowns who are put on some CEO posts in some companies to lose a spectacular amount of money…
Yeah.. ditto … could include spouses who aren’t CEO material onto the review list for Cut Waste Comm. Perhaps, could consider having a Hall of Shame .. another museum to zest up the ‘arty farty’ scene and add onto the white elephant list.