Photos: Exclusive Singapore LionsXII
For awhile, the newly-built Jalan Besar Stadium was witnessing fandom behavior reminiscent of the decade-long, Singapore Lions era: cheeky taunts at the referee and opponents, colloquial chants (watch the potentially viral “Yuh, ayuh” or “Go, let’s go” in the video below) and probably most heartwarming of them all, the Kallang Wave done with more gusto than we’ve seen in years.
But the fire may die down (again) with the recent Facebook announcement made by the Exclusive Singapore LionsXII (ExcluSinga) fan club, whose presence at the Jalan Besar Stadium Gallery has played a crucial part in rallying support for the LionXII team.
Said the administrator in a Facebook post yesterday, “After much consideration and discussion, ExcluSinga has decided not to turn (up) for any matches inclusive of LionsXII, NT (national team) and S-League matches until the security shows us some respect and stops shouting at, pushing and accusing us!” They also apologized to fans and players on behalf of the fan club and reiterated, “Until the head of security calls us, we won’t be there.”
When contacted, club founder Shukor Kadim revealed the Football Association of Singapore (FAS) has responded to the announcement of their “strike” by setting up a meeting with major representatives from the Singapore Police Force (SPF) and Certis Cisco next week. There, the club plans to make themselves heard.
“We mean business,” said club chairman Syed Faris. “The club, save for a handful of individual fans, won’t come for the next match if they don’t do something about this.”
By “this”, Faris means the hostile, unprofessional treatment the club members have been receiving from security staff the last few months.
“We’ve encountered many problems with them,” Faris explained. “They don’t stand by a standard operating procedure and just seem to create their own rules. For example, we had been putting up these five banners—costing thousands of dollars of our own money—for seven months before they said we couldn’t use them anymore. The same went with the Malaysian Super League champion scarves, given to us by FAS themselves. Security just decided one day they didn’t want us waving those around at a Malaysia Cup game. And they didn’t say it in a nice way, too.”
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Faris explained that he and other club administrative staff have been acting as the middle person between the security staff and members of the club so as to avoid conflict.
“When they tell us we can’t do this and that, we’ve always communicated it to everyone,” he said. “But the demands, many of which were shouted to us, got increasingly ridiculous. We couldn’t walk around, beat our drums or chant loudly. They’d shove us, threaten to get the police to charge us and accuse us of being gangsters.”
The last straw came when a club member was pushed almost to the point of falling over. When Faris stepped in to mediate, the same treatment was given to him.
“The SPF has been good to us and we respect them. But we want Cisco security staff to apologize,” he said.” We have a tagline: ‘we’re hardcore, not hooligans’. And come on, this is football!”
When contacted, FAS agreed that the Malaysia Super League turnout at the Jalan Besar Stadium, much of which was full capacity, was the biggest the association had seen in years.
[UPDATED AUGUST 23] The meeting between ExcluSinga and the security agencies is set for this Wednesday.
For real-time updates on the Malaysia Cup, visit the LionsXII and ExcluSinga Facebook pages.
