Lion City Cup: Our best footballers on show (but the stadium is only half full)

By Les Tan/Red Sports. Photos by Adrian Tan/Red Sports

The Lion City Cup has served up a treat for football fans in Singapore since last Saturday. For those who missed the excitement the Cubs brought us in the 2010 Youth Olympic Games, it was good to again see players like Hanafi and Jonathan Tan in action.

The skilful play of Adam Swandi in the number 10 jersey for the Singapore U15s has also been a treat for Singapore fans and the 4-3 comeback win against Newcastle U15 was energising.

Despite this, the number of fans have not touched the 3,000 mark in the 6,000-capacity Jalan Besar Stadium. It has been a perennial bugbear of sports organisers that local fans do not come out in full force to support a Singapore national team in action. The Jalan Besar Stadium last saw a capacity crowd when the Cubs played in the 2010 Youth Olympic Games. The highest number of fans at Jalan Besar Stadium this year is probably for the National A Division Football final between Meridian Junior College and Victoria Junior College which saw the grandstand almost filled to capacity.

There is no one solution to this issue. In fact, it is debatable that anything can be done at all, even with a generous marketing budget.

Perhaps the Singapore sports fan, when all is said and done, will only come out in big numbers when it is a competition that strikes them at the emotional core, when the game means something more than just two teams playing a sport.

The Singapore sports fan does come out in huge numbers when the collective pride of a country is at stake, when winning means an affirmation of a tribal identity, and losing is an emotional death.

But few are such occasions in Singapore, and we are the poorer for it as a country.

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