Raffles girls beat Jurong JC to secure 13th consecutive A Division badminton title

First and foremost, let me congratulate the Jurong Junior College badminton team on their wonderful showing in the entire tournament, culminating in an unprecedented double appearance for both the boys and girls team, pushing defending champions Raffles Institution (Junior College) to the wire and putting up a great show of sportsmanship (most of the time) in the process.

Now let us all take a step back, and review all the mindless bickering that has gone on with regards to this A Division Badminton Finals match.

As many of you may understand, the fundamental reason for a conflict is the fact that one party may not understand the perspective of the other party. Thus, do give me the opportunity to enlighten you upon why people from Raffles or perhaps some people from general public may feel so strongly opposed towards this JJC badminton team.

Let me draw you an analogy – let us imagine that there is this annual gemstones competition. Gemstone collectors from all over Singapore would gather once a year to compare the stones that they have collected and polished, in order to determine who among them all has the greatest collection. Now among these collectors, there are always 2 favourites, one collector called AC who loves collecting those really beautiful yellow and blue stones, and another called RI who loves collecting those stunning green, black and white gemstones. However, one competitor, feeling left out, decides that the competition is unfair because he does not know where in Singapore to find these gemstones, or how to polish them. Hence, he starts going to places like China and Korea, in order to collect more beautiful gemstones, because these areas are where such gemstones exist in abundance. At the end of the day, he is the only one who does so and eventually does very well in the competition. Now, tell me, would other collectors competing in this competition be happy? (That is a rhetorical question by the way, in case your school hasn’t taught you that).

Let me make it clear – I am in no position to dictate any policy of JJC’s, nor do I claim to have any understanding as to why any JJC policies are made, but I know that in Raffles Institution, we make the best of what we have, and we always strive to do the best with what we have, no matter what kind of odds we are given. Look at our canoeing and volleyball teams for example. Most of the sports are RI(JC) are boosted by the fact that there is already a strong foundation in the secondary school section of RI. However, the secondary school section of RI does not organise CCA trainings for those two sports. Yet, we do not outsource to other countries for talent, we simply dig in our heels and strive to become better. That is what being a sportsman is about, about self improvement, about the spirit of the underdog, and about learning lessons, even in loss.

And that, simply put, is what all the other schools are disgruntled about. JJC, instead of training their existing Singapore players and seeking to improve, look to other shores in order to bring in talent that may put up a challenge against local sportsmen. This widens the entire playing field, and borders on unfairness. So what if Raffles and to a small extent ACS(I) gets all the best players, in the true spirit of sports, I would want to beat them on pure talent, heart and determination alone, and not beat them on talent that is brought in with the primary purpose of doing so.

To me, and perhaps to many other Rafflesians, that is the true meaning of sports. That is the true meaning of competing, and that is why many people express a certain level of discontent towards the JJC badminton team’s policies.

to sportmanship:

i think you would have to actually come up with better arguments, rather than to resort to personal attacks about childish immature comments. take care.

HEY… Stop being so childish.. FT have long ago come into Singapore and they exist in all places, all schools, all workplace.. Why should they be scolded/doubted because of this badminton game? Try to be in their shoes and think for them okay?

EVERY PLACE HAS FT!! STOP ARGUING!! SINGAPOREANS… JUST BUCK UP AND WIN THESE FT IF YOU CAN.. IF YOU ARE BETTER THAN THEM.. U CAN REPRESENT YOUR SCHOOL TO PLAY IN THESE TOURNAMENTS TOO..

SO PROVE YOURSELF!!!!

For all the ardent supporters of JJ, I express my heartfelt thanks.

This issue of JJ’s FTs in the badminton team has indeed aroused much unnecessary attention from the media and mass and also, our principal, Mr Koh, has also been brought into the picture. He is generally very much misunderstood by the public with regards to his commotion with the head coach of RI(JC). However, I wish to speak in his defense as an ex-JJcian. If anyone of you would for a moment, put yourself in the shoes of a JJcian, having your Principal speaking up for you in public because you’ve been reprimanded by an outsider, how would you feel? Touched? Oh yes, definitely. As a principal, he is sincere in protecting his students and he is willing to sacrifice his ‘image’ because he genuinely cares for his students of JJC, regardless of race or nationality. To outsiders on the other hand, you might see his actions as barbaric, and that it was not necessary for a principal to act on such a ‘low’ level. May I present to you a very simple analogy?
One day when you are out with your parents on the streets and you got scolded from an outsider for no apparent reason, how would your parents react? Certainly, there are many responses to this situation but the most common outcome would be your very own parents confronting the outsider for the unreasonable treatment towards you. from this analogy, I hope you would be able to view Mr Koh as our parent and JJC students as the kid. Mr Koh showers his tender-loving-care to his students as a fatherly figure and he has won respect and loyalty from many JJCians over the years. As such, I seek your understanding that any criticism towards our Principal is intolerable.

Still on the issue of FTs in JJC, I hope the public first understands the situation of our sports scene in schools. First and foremost, most of the better players would choose to enter a relatively good JCs, namely Raffles, Hwa Chong, National, Anglo-chinese, Victoria and Temasek. Over the years, it has been a trend that only these schools would precede to the finals. If this is to continue, does it suggest that all other community JCs are subjected to be the-last-resort school of choice?

With all the good players congregated in a few players, there is no room for growth for other JCs. Since our local better players are willing to be benched in their respective schools, JJC thus sought FTs to boost our academic as well as sports results. Having said so, local students in JJC are not underprivileged in any ways. In our most recent A division badminton competition, there were still local badminton players who took part and the boys’ team has a captain who is a Singaporean. Despite their nationality differences, the team has worked hard together and they have a common identity to begin with; JJCians. One fine example would be our boys doubles, Frances and Hong Bo Jun. they are not only different in nationality, but also race and first language spoken. But at the end of the day, it is the college attire that they all worn to the competition ground that binds them together, as JJCians.

There is no nationality struggle in JJ itself, and I do not see why outsiders have to pin-point this as an issue to discuss. Eventually when all things settle down, FTs in JJC do help to strengthen our badminton team, as well as contribute to our academic success. But I would like to stress the fact that these are all achievements that we Singaporeans want to see before we enroll to a school. FTs are there to help unveil the qualities of JJC because the better locals are all too pre-occupied with their first choice to notice a community JC like JJC. In JJ, opportunities are given to you as long as you prove yourself worthy of it, as simple as that. Mr Koh does not judge you based on your background and he gives everybody an equal chance to grow.

It just happens that at this point in time, FTs in JJC became a topic of focus and thus neglected all the other locals who are also part of the school. But, since many local students have also spoken up for JJ, I reckon it is suffice to the public that we locals are also very proud of our school and we do not think that we are being sidelined. On top of that, we are very happy that FTs have helped us to show the rest that we JJCians, are also capable of being ‘there’ – the top league.

1.Singaporeans should never forget how our little island become what it is today. It was our fore fathers who were immigrants who built this country.
How ironic and shallow when we have our decendents resenting on foreign talents. Talk about not forgetting our roots.
Why have we become so territorial when it was our immigrant fore fathers that has given us what we have today?
(Btw, didnt a certain coach from a certain school that is making all the noise having Pakistani roots too?)

2. Sports is BEAUTIFUL because in times of instability / war, Sports is the ONLY instrument that can bring people of all age,colours and nationalities together. And it is in times of peace, that trouble makers are using Sports to cause a divide.

3. Nobody can deny that JJC’s existence made the tournament even meaningful in the first place. Some schools will only stop being cry babies when they run away with the titles every year without any challenge. I have only hear of sore losers, amusingly, we have a case of sore winners here.

4. RJC is where they produce leaders, perhaps, people who govern our country. What irony when we have their students questioning our national policy of foreign talents. In doing so, these “leaders cadets” are throwing our greatest sporting acheivement, our Olympic silver medal in 2008 beijing Olympics, into question. Perhaps our leaders-in-the-making need to sing in sync with our current governers with policies?

To Matthew:
hmmm.. how does foreign talent raise the standard of local players?
easy. if the foreign players play well, and if local athletes train with or against them, naturally they should get more experienced. it is the same theory with any other sport.

whats stopping other schools from doing the same? nothing. its just that JJ is more awesome and has done it.lol.

Not everybody from Barcelona FC comes from Barcelona(the city). but do we really care where the players come from? woo. barca rocks.

To anyone that supports foreign talent esp JJlover,

If JJC is justified in bringing foreign talent to fill up almost all the slots in the main 7 of their badminton team, what’s stopping other schools from doing the same? How will that help improve the standard of LOCAL players? The purpose of the tournament is to showcase the badminton talent in Singapore isn’t it?

JJ’s girls team is not 7 main china players. the coach rotates them during the various matches. he did not put them down during the finals because they were from china hence better players. but it was because they trained harder, were more committed and on better form compared to the other players on that day. this is really unfair to JJ badminton players. regardless of whether the college has many foreign players or not. why cant you guys spare a thought for them. if u were to go to another country to further ur education and then represent ur school in an INTER SCHOOL competition, ending up being put down just because of you are not from that country, it’s not fair is it? please stop this. let’s be gracious.

“A straight forward reason will be, JJC is one of the SINGAPORE Junior College,in case u don’t know. By supporting a junior college from Singapore, I dun see anything wrong with that.”

i think you just dropped a brick on your own feet. With regards to the earlier comment made by the jjcian. As you (jjcian) have stated jurong junior college is a SINGAPORE JUNIOR COLLEGE, so why is it that All the main players in the girls badminton team are all from china? and isn’t it another wonderful coincidence that so the china “scholars” from china that go to your school can play badminton and that the numbers are increasing year after year?

So just for your information the foreign talent scheme was indeed promoted by the government years back, but the main idea of the entire scheme was to help bring up the sporting standards for Singapore not for the foreign talents to replace us totally. Secondly, if my memory hasn’t failed me our Singapore pledge went something like

“regardless of RACE,LANGUAGE OR RELIGION.” nothing in the pledge said anything about nationality did it? correct me if i am wrong.

Thirdly my rebuttal for your argument that the reason why Singapore’s education is so successful is not totally based on meritocracy, at least not in the sense that you have put it. The reason why our education system is so successful is because our government has put in so much effort to ensure that every child is well taken care of and set up different institutes to cater to the needs of various kinds of students thus the establishment of junior colleges, ites, ploys etc. Apart from them the hard work of our students should not be discounted. However how many psc scholars are china scholars or scholars from any other countries?

Foreign talents should be sparring partners to help locals of their teams improve instead of totally replacing the locals which could end up in the drowning out of our local sporting scene. also a very important point i have to state is that i have nothing against the jj supporters at all, in fact i think they had so much school spirit. All my arguments have been pin pointed at the coach and his team. i am appalled at how a local coach (coach of jj) could even bear to field the entire team of foreign talents and not feel ashamed about himself. Meritocracy, should be displayed in the right way and not like this. Once again, foreign talents should be used to bring up the standards for locals as being sparring partners or maybe 2 or 3 of them could play but it should never come to the point where all the players fielded are foreign talent. That would no longer be a team from a SINGAPORE JUNIOR COLLEGE.

i was the ex-captain of JJ girls team…what do u wanna share with our team??