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Showing posts with the label Ho Ho Cup

Friendly Fixtures - From Sing Tao to Juventus

We may not see the return of the International Champions Cup Singapore (ICCSG) tournament due to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic but it is worthwhile to look back on some happenings that took place in the past when foreign teams came to our shores to play a few friendly matches. The arrival of those marquee names in the world football to this dot of the globe in recent years has always been a crowd-puller that not only drawn local fans from their couches from Jurong to Tampines and Woodlands to Bedok by making their way down to Kallang, the ICCSG, as it is commonly known as, has also been a lure for the regional supporters of those European clubs as well like how the Indonesian fans of Inter made their presence felt in their match against Chelsea in the 2017 edition. Advertisement for Anchor Soccer Festival' 74 ( NLB archive ) The trend of such visits by these foreign sides did not start during the 1970s when there were tournaments like the Anchor Soccer Festival in 1974 (so

Almost Made It To Yorkshire ...

Cable telegram was costly in the past that only keywords were used to relay the message and hoping the recipients would understand the content. Nonetheless, misunderstandings would occur at times if the recipients failed to decipher the intention of the sender like this plan, as shown in the below clipping from The Straits Times (ST) , to send two Singaporean players to Leeds United in 1950. The news that caused a great sensation among local fans ( NLB archive )   The receiver of that cable message was the legendary "Uncle" Choo Seng Quee from AJR Hooper from Leeds on the possibility of having Leong Hoi Meng and Foo Hee Jong attend a trial at Leeds United. Hooper served in the British Army during the post-war years and found himself involved in the local football scene as a referee on top of his military commitments. It was during that period he discovered a number of local players like Chinese Athletic Association's Leong and Foo who showed the potential to p

Between The "Two of Them"

Preface I was thinking if was it possible to come up with two separate blog posts or should I put everything together to consolidate into one given the scarcity of the materials? Even though they shared some connections along the way for having an intertwined history, yet had to go separate ways after some evolution along the way. The old logo of MCFA (left) and the logo of SCFA (right) After much deliberations, I decided to put everything I gathered on Singapore Chinese Football Association (later known as Singapore Chinese Football Club) and Malaya (later Malaysia) Chinese Football Association into one single post. Nonetheless, should you have any material or details about the aforementioned subjects, please feel free to email me in order to enrich this blog post, thanks. The Beginning According to an article of the souvenir publication produced by Singapore Chinese Football Association (SCFA) for their social and dance held on 15 December 1956, this umbrella body of Chin

Bloated Effort Resulted The Ho Ho Cup

In the very beginning, Mr Gaw Khek Khiam 's idea was to initiate a tournament similar to that of the Malaya Cup (now Malaysia Cup) but to be contested by Chinese footballers representing the various Malay States and Singapore in 1925. BLOATED ATTEMPT TO REPLICATE MALAYA CUP Unfortunately, the response to the concept of Semarang-born, Raffles Institution graduated Gaw was lukewarm from those Chinese football teams across the Straits of Johor when Singapore's footballing prowess was way ahead of them in that era. Chee Lim with Ho Ho Cup (Malayan Saturday Post, 25 May 1929 (NLB NewspaperSG online archive ) Not to be deterred by the lack of enthusiasm from the rest of the Malayan sides and had already spent a princely sum of £200 on a trophy made in England, the proprietor of the Ho Ho Biscuit Factory approached local renowned footballer Yee Cheok Wah and travelled together to Hong Kong where they proposed to organise a match between Chinese footballers represen