Local or foreign talent for Singapore sports?

By Gowri Somasundaram

GRAPHIC: TAN ZHUO HUI

While debate continues to brew over the integration of foreign talent into local sports, coaches say that embracing foreigners remains important in building the domestic scene, but the long-term success lies in the early and consistent grooming of home-grown talents.

The Foreign Sports Talent Scheme was started in 1996 with the intention to boost and develop local sports standards.

One of the stalwarts of the scheme was the Singapore Table Tennis Association (STTA). The STTA’s recruitment of foreign talents in the table tennis scene began earlier, in the early 1990s, with Jing Junhong as one of its pioneers.

Jing placed fourth at the Sydney Olympic Games in 2000. She is now the Chief Coach under the Youth Development programme within the STTA.

At the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the Singapore women’s table tennis team achieved a silver medal in the team category. Four years later at the 2012 London Olympics, they finished with a bronze each in the singles and team categories.

However, at this year’s Rio Olympics, the team finished without a medal. Subsequently, in October, the STTA released a statement regarding its performance strategies for the next Games, announcing hopes to “field a local-born talent to the 2020 Tokyo Olympics”.

This was part of the plan to “develop and rejuvenate our national teams to be future ready”, with the association stating the need to “place greater emphasis on the development of our youth players”.

They also revealed that three-time Olympic medallist and top women’s singles padder Feng Tianwei would be dropped from the women’s team.

Mr Chua Kok Wei, who coaches NTU’s female table tennis team, believes that the alteration to STTA’s approach is necessary for the growth of the sport. He described it as a shift that should have been made “yesterday”.

“Results will not be immediate. It will take at least two to three years to see if the structure and development of locals will produce successful results,” said Mr Chua.

According to Mr Chua, young Singapore-born paddlers are also not short on potential.

At the 22nd South East Asian Junior & Cadet Table Tennis Championships 2016, the Singapore contingent bagged 10 golds out of a possible 13 events.

“Our junior players are very good at what they do, but one of the problems is that some of their standards might drop when they progress into their teens,” said Mr Chua.

“As compared to some other countries, our system does not invest much in the local talents after their junior years, thus leading to a slower progress.”

However, locals do not stand much chance against players from China, said the 45-year-old, who has been coaching schools’ table tennis teams for the past 25 years.

He explained that what makes China the sport’s top nation is its scientific methodology and consistent training approach.

“They have machines to analyse the angle, the speed of the spinning of the ball and all the technicalities,” he said, describing the difference in approach that sets them apart on the international circuit.

“In addition, they have yearly national tournaments for all age groups from seven years old. They advance from provincial tournaments to national tournaments and then they get selected to train for the national team,” said Mr Chua.

The attractiveness of foreign players is not specific to table tennis.

When it comes to the local football scene, the system of naturalising foreigners has been adopted since the early 2000s, when Radojko “Raddy” Avramovic was the coach of the national team.

During his tenure, Singapore won three ASEAN Football Championships, with naturalised players such as Mustafic Fahrudin, Aleksandar Duric and Daniel Bennett forming an integral part of the team.

But, the national men’s football team currently ranks 171 in the world. This is an all-time low as the team was ranked 92nd in 2005.

NTU men’s football coach Ramoo Tharmaretnam said the national team would stand a better chance if they revert to looking at foreigners and in particular, the available pool of such talent who are already living in Singapore.

Any team with an increased pool of athletes to pick from and well-groomed talent to tap on could potentially do better, he said.

“Getting the children of expats who live in Singapore would also give a higher success rate when naturalising the athletes,” said Mr Ramoo, who coaches the National Under-17 Men’s Football team.

“This would also guarantee higher acceptance from Singaporeans, in turn encouraging the athletes.”
But one of the main factors that may stop student footballers from going all out is the paper chase, said Mr Ramoo.

“Our society is overly concerned and driven by the paper chase. Hence, our choice would be obvious between sports and studies, though a selected group like the swimmers are able to manage both.

However, I can’t say the same for our footballers though.”

Referring to the presence of foreign talent in the local scene, Mr Ramoo said: “I would say I support the grooming of local talents. But we should be able to accept and embrace the foreigners and only then can we put these together to achieve success as a team.”