AM I A FOOTBALL NUT?

A few years back I bought a t shirt that has the words; ‘football is life;the rest are mere details '. It may be viewed as an exaggerated statement; however as I pondered on my own obsession with the beautiful game it may sound more of the truth than anything else.

Growing up in a kampong in Kuching during the late 60s & early 70s; any boy worth his salt had to play the game. Our kampong team was proudly called ‘bustop’. what a name, imagination in those days must be a scarcity. Those days you have teams with such moniker as 'bombo' goodness gracious me, a name like that made you wonder whether geography is such a difficult subject that you need to name your team after an African boy. Others came up with teams such as 'Sioux', 'gertak', and of course our biggest rivals ‘selepas’. Our derby games always ended up with a replication of a Wang Yu movie except that those bruises were for real. My indoctrination & dedication to the Manchunian reds started with their Busby babes. Flicking those back cover page of the war comics, you drooled at pictures of Bestie & Bobby Charlton. We had our own local footballing heroes, watching the Sarawak cup at the jubilee ground was a sacred ritual, players such as Morshidi Awet, Jahar Nor, Aini Kem to name a few. We imagined ourselves in their moulds, having the guile of Aini Kem in midfield, the prowess of Morshidi Awet were what we boys dreamed then of emulating. Those days your life simply revolved on football, everyday was a football day and to me such unbridled joy reflected the simplicity of boyhood. At my own school, we had the old josephians-thomians rivalry. Thrashing the thomians must be at the same level of delirium experienced by a Celtic fan when his team beat Rangers. Only later did I realise why my school colours were green! At one game I remembered vividly the euphoria that erupted when we beat the thomians 2-1 at the jubilee ground. Saperi or pe'eng our hero then & who can forget Morni Kambri's antics as a bugle playing fan on the sideline. I knew my thomian friends still felt rankled by that defeat.

My football odyssey went up an ante when I went to the birthplace of football for my studies. Doing my A levels in Halifax a remote town saddled within the Pennines, I witnessed one of the greatest upset in FA cup history! Their opponents then was the lesser half of Manchester; city that is. City then had the most expensive player, Steve Daley if I could recall bought for around 1.5 million pounds from wolves; and believe it or not as the saying in the song says; Halifax won1-0 .However what happened after the game could deem to be one of the scariest moments in my life. That was the first & only time I was caught in the frays of football hooliganism. Walking out of the stadium, we were rained by bricks & stones thrown by the mindless poor losers from the Blue half of Manchester. The shay ,Halifax football ground was a mad stampede of Yorkshire men diving for cover, another war of the roses as they said in that part of the world. What happened next was a testimony of how serious football hooliganism was entrenched in the game; the whole town of Halifax was ransacked with shop windows smashed & buildings vandalised. My sojourn with football did not end though; such calamity was just a small respite.

Doing my engineering degree at University of Birmingham put me within access of the most successful English club then, Aston villa. Saturdays were sometimes spent watching the likes of Gary Shaw, Peter Withe; Des bremmer & of course the incomparable Sid Cowans strutting their stuff. Naturally the most awaited Saturday was when the Manchunian reds came to town. Those years though being a man utd fan was not much of a joy with the scousers dominating the English football scene. Another enduring memory I cherished was going on our faculty 's wembley trips watching England playing. Those England games were always special . The bus trip back to Birmingham though was no joy ; if you can imagine having to endure a journey with 30 odd people & you being the only sober one.

During my initial working life; continuing interest in football came naturally .We had a team of overweight; overrated prima donnas under the guise of UK graduate Association Miri team. To be fair we did have some decent players, actually one of them did succeed in making a career in politics.He was a decent goalkeeper then ,good at keeping shots away.I must admit it must have come handy for his future calling. We had our weekend games at the gymkhana club field. I though was proud to say good enough [hmmm] to play for the Shell department engineering team, as usual fantasising that I was the Asian or rather the Pujut version of my hero; Stevie Coppell .The team though was a real riot, comprising expatriates who were possibly not good enough to play for Rochdale’s reserves but still seeing themselves as reincarnation of Billy Wright, John Charles & god forbids Stanley Matthews. That also tells you what the average age of our team was.

I remembered the buzz in town then when Che Su's babes came to town. In my opinion that team was a pure joy to watch; their movements off the ball; their one touch & of course the sublime skills of the two midfield maestros in the form of Ali shafiee & ong Hock Peng. A great team that was destined to be the bedrock of the ngap sayot era. Yes the ngap sayot era was a living folklore for us Sarawakians. I was working in Johor Bahru then, and true to my nature my port of call to satisfy my football mania was the Larkin stadium .Those were the hey days for the Malaysian premiere league. The euphoria & despair of the Malaysia cup semifinal replay at the kallang stadium would be forever etched in my memory. That man Ali Shafiee though achieved notoriety for the wrong reasons during that infamous 'battle' with Kuala Lumpur. I had earlier driven with my Malaccan collegue to KL to watch that game. After the furore; my Malaccan friend was nowhere to be seen; being within a crowd of Sarawakians then admittedly was not a good choice.

Staying & living in Kuching for the past recent years has not ebbed my enthusiasm for the Sarawak football team. I still watch them playing albeit in barely filled stadium at most times. I have observed our natural tendency to be fickle; I have experienced the same gamut of emotions whenever Sarawak won or lost irrespective of the opponents. I have noted the present decline in Malaysian football with the same despair as everyone else. Maybe what we really need are football heroes; heroes that our sons can identify with as they do now with shriek [Rooney], beanpole [crouch] & goofy [Ronal do]. Heroes that was in abundance during the ngap sayot days.As we could imagine then names like Jalil Ramli,Roslan Ismail and Ali Shafiee to name a few were our football icons.Just as I had my heroes in the earlier days, Aini kem, Morshidi awet & Jahar Nor.

Am I a football nut?

You bet I am