A DOUBLE OF OUR OWN

Pic taken from NSTOnline

THE NPC-GAB Inter-Media Futsal Championships 2008 at the Sports Barn in PJ yesterday ended on a high for all of us at the New Straits Times. Get the story HERE.

We walk into the office today knowing that Balai Berita is home to not only the men's but also the women's inter-media champions from the biggest inter-media tourney in the country this year - there were 16 men's teams and five women's teams contesting the tourney, which yours truly was in charge of organising as NPC exco member.

The girls, coached by Ridzwan Abdullah @ Nelson Fernandez and Leslie Andres were surprising. This was the first time most of them even played futsal. Hell, they'd started playing just a little more than a week prior to the tournament. But if you needed an example of discipline, you should have showed up at Sports Barn yesterday and watched them. Each and every one of them stuck to the strategy, kept their positions throughout and played their hearts out. They deserve every bit of the success.

In the men's section, we fielded two teams, NST 'A' and NST 'B'.. NST 'A' was a team comprising editorial staff and we were lucky just to make the quarterfinals, although we played badly to get knocked out by Bernama there. NST 'B' comprised our photographers, office boys, finance and HR staff. NST 'B' was the team we'd hoped would go far in the tournament and they proved us right.

They are the ones who fully utilise the sporting facilities available at Balai Berita, like our gym, futsal court and so on. They've been taking it very seriously, like the guy Mohd Shahir Othman, who was named player of the tournament. He's even had a strength and endurance training programme for the past year. These guys deserve it for all the hard work they put in. They beat a Malaysia Nanban team that had raised numerous doubts from most participating teams, as some had stated that their players were not staff of the paper. Our eyes and ears on the ground too (well, most of us are journalists and this is our bread and butter) got closer to them and sure enough some of their players leaked out information that just two of their 10 players registered were staff of Malaysia Nanban. So, they should feel really disappointed at losing 3-2 to a TRUE BLUE newspaper team in the final. I surely hope they look into reviving the spirit of sportsmanship at their newspaper.

Sure there were lots of complaints. I had a tough time trying to appease friends, while maintaining a strict adherence to the rules. None were as serious as the Malaysia Nanban issue. We'd relaxed the rule and opened up the tournament to non-NPC members, so long as players were employed by media organisations this time around, but still some people saw it as a chance to cheat. What use is there having a tournament to strengthen the bonds and friendships within our media fraternity, when you bring in people who have nothing to do with us, just prizemoney on their minds. It is like inviting the taxi driver to your family dinner. He just wants you to settle the fare, but he'll take the food too.

It was my first time doing such a thing. Hope it all turned out well for everybody and that I didn't lose any friendships.

Special thanks to Datuk Dina Rizal of SportsUnite, Ng Ping Loong of Nestle, Tang Kok Wai of Figos, Datuk Kamal of F&N, Herman Shah of Sports Barn, our National Press Club president Mokhtar Hussain, vice president Joe Fernando, club manager Stephen Francis, clubhouse caterer SB Loy, our Herbalife agent, good friend and complimentary emcee services provider Tony Gayondato and all the friends who helped us make this happen.