Singapore Foreign Talent... Are they helping the country?

That's definitely a factor. You've better chances finding a protege in a pool of 1.5B instead of ~5M.

And how many of those 5M ppl would want to take a chance and risk their future by playing sports (not to mention parental resistance) ? Again, cultivating local talent is a nice dream, but reality is completely different.

 

Size of population matters??

Well, Denmark with a population of about 5 million managed to win the Olympic gold, AE and they did well very in the recently concluded KO too.

Others sports, Trinidad & Tobago with a population of about 1.5 million qualified for the 2006WC football while Indonesia with about 200 million are nowhere in sight.

Jamaica with about 3 million people are a powerhouse in athletics. Usain Bolt??

Personally, I think having a larger base helps but I believe the key is organization, development etc.

Singapore may not be producing top shuttlers now. Given time with sound grassroot structure and developmental progress, we may see some decent shuttlers from Singapore.

 

They are definitely foreign talents. Unfortunately in Msia we dont have much talented coaches in hand except for Misbun and Tan Kim Her.

 

I came to read about the legendary Pele's opinion on the concept of good athlete.Out of topic for a sec - He tend to think Ronaldo didnt deserve the FIFA title.Instead,we should recognize the loyalty of kaka and Messi to stay with their previous teams.That's made them more special than other athletes.That determines the sport to be worth to be watch.
I hope any foreign athlete they had would play for the sport,if not for the country.
Honestly,i hate to see a game without a soul.

 

Singapore should sign Lindan, TH, LCW, PG & other good players, like it did for the football national team.. How come a country have sporean, malay, indian, chinese, african, european to play as a team for spore football national team? Spore should sign coach from other good country to train its players.. That's the way.

 

singapore did sign a lot of china coaches and most of them work in schools. School is the best place to spot talents and they are doing it, I believe in 5-10 years time, they will produce their own but of cause they need parents support as well cause singapore parents tend to focus on study.

 

Spot on!

The grassroot is the right place to start.

 

Singapore's Foreign Talent Policy

I guess I have to speak my mind again on this subject of Singapore's policy on Foreign Talent.

I suppose each country will try to find the best possible strategy to achieve certain goals. In Singapore's case, foreign talent is the way to go in almost all of its major endeavours, whether economic, research, medical, educational, entertainment, sports, etc, more so now than before as the world has turned more competitive.

Foreign talent is not new to Singapore ever since she became independent. Unlike some countries which clamour for nationalism and degrade all things foreign, Singapore welcomed multi-national companies to remain and went on to package economic and investment incentives for the world's big companies to set foot here. Thus Singapore prospered economically and caught up with its neighbours and then went ahead to become the first country in Southeast Asia that achieved "First World" status.

As Singapore became richer, she could then focus more on non-economic issues like sports. But the Singaporean culture, like many other developed countries, is more oriented to making money, so sports for most parents and their children, is at the bottom of their priority list. Studies come first, sports second. With a good education, meaning paper qualifications and degrees, your livelihood and future prospects become better.

So, in the recent past, the standard of sports in our schools, tertiary institutions and at national level remained generally poor. Yes we did produce some exceptional results at regional games but as the field goes wider to international, Commonwealth, Asian and Olympic games, we were simply not good enough.

The importance of non-economic achievements like the Arts, Music, Dance, Design, Animation, and Sports, and anything that can add to the creative process, took on greater meaning to the Singapore government and authorities and during the last several years, much has been done to improve the situation.

 

Sports in Singapore took on a new meaning

Sports can do wonders to not only the athlete but also for the nation.
We take up sports for various reasons, principally to engage in an interesting and meaningful activity with our friends as one good way to utilise the time available to us.

But to the nation, sports means a healthy lifestlye, an alternate to drugs, crimes and other negative ventures. Sports engages the mind and body with all its beneficial effects. Less people will fall sick, productivity levels should improve. Sports can bond people and make for a stronger and cohesive nation. And if sports people did well and became champions at the highest level, the nation will be proud and attract great international publicity. Imagine winning a gold medal for your country at the Olympics, or even capturing the AE title for badminton!

So despite the fact that Singapore is almost devoid of champion athletes and lacks a great tradition of sports in the past, the Singapore government decided more than 4 years ago to establish a Sports School for certain sports and games that we feel we can do well. We certainly lag far behind many of our neighbours like Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and others in this respect but a start has to be made if we want to build a nation of sports-loving people.

Now what about badminton?

When Singapore was part of Malaya, our maestro Wong Peng Soon had been no.1 there for a long time. He had won a number of All-England MS titles, at that time the unofficial world championship. Sarawak-born Ong Poh Lim who became a Singapore citizen, was also in the Malaya team with Peng Soon that won the Thomas Cup and shattered the ego of the Danes in particular. And there was Ismail Marjan who normally partnered Poh Lim in MD. They were Singapore's badminton heroes but that was all that Singapore could boast of as players coming thereafter were just not up to their calibre.

And it was not surprising as Singapore was fighting for economic survival and had no time for sports. It went on for a very, very long time. Although badminton remained popular in schools and with the masses, it was not treated as professionally, unlike now when even the schools engage China coaches to train their students to bring them glory at national school competitons.

Badminton at the Singapore Sports School is not of a high standard just yet. With a limited intake each year, not many can be produced and those that were trained may not have the quality to continue into the national team to become champions. Even at the school level, the other 'badminton' schools like Montford Secondary, which takes in foreign students as well, has students who could beat some of the best from the Sports School. Just compare the four years of secondary education that our own Sports School could spare to train the students with other systems elsewhere, particularly in China, and we can see a great difference. It takes many years to produce a champion, no less than 10,000 hours as some specialist have observed.

Because of the late start and a limited talent pool it will take many more years for Singapore to produce its own badminton players that can match the regional kingpins like Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand.

So what should Singapore do in the interim period?

Forget about professional badminton as our schools cannot produce players of quality to be accepted for further training? Or continue to maintain the interest in badminton by organizing international competitions like the SS and to scout for foreign talents who can fill the present void and provide the competition?

As has been publicized in the media, there were arguments for and against getting foreign-born talents to compete for honours for one's country.

Why should Singapore spend so much money and effort to develop these foreign talents instead of our local-born? Winnings from foreign talents are hollow. Some foreign talents are not grateful and leave the country when they are most needed, etc, etc.

Yes, Singapore has to go through a trail period. The objective of foreign talents is two-fold: to raise our own standards when locals have a chance to
interact with them and to bring success to the country and raise morale. Until our "grassroots", particularly in the schools, can produce an acceptable standard to feed the sports school and subsequently the national squads, we have to remain patient. This takes a very long time but in the meantime we can keep interest alive with the foreign talents and locals who could make the grade.

As we have seen, even the foreign-talent finds it very difficult to compete in the international arena and some have dropped out. But during their prime years of competiting for Singapore and winning some events, I suppose they have done their duty by maintaining interest. Thereafter, they have their own future to look after.

Only recently, we had so many of our best national players retiring or training only part-time. This is a great blow to Singapore badminton as it takes a long time to develop a player to international standard and our own locals are just not good enough yet.

Our schools are doing their best by employing more professional foreign coaches. If the base continues to widen more of our own students can make it to the Sports School and the national team. Hopefully there will come a time when our own locals' skill can match those of the foreign talents and then we will begin to have a team made up entirely of locals. But I'm afraid this is only a dream which hopefully will materialize sooner than later.

 

Start an Institute of Sports whereby students get scholarship to train as well as to learn to teach others. There is no easy way: there is no gain if there is no pain.

To create a culture of sportsmen in the country, it demands a lot of involvement from a lot of people. For a tiny country, it may pay to focus on particular sports (e.g. table tennis or badminton) - it is better to choose the individual sports rather than team ones because it is obvious for team you need a lot of focused people to win.

Take an example of Malaysia. It has excelled in Squash with Nicol David as World No.1; LCW as World No.1 in badminton; now Rizal is World No.1 in Keirin cycling. The Bowling team has excelled at various times too. It is possible.

 

LCW is an exceptional World #1 for he has never won a title outside Malaysia as the #1.

 

Yes I agree with you. I think I read somewhere that our authorities are looking into the possibilities of establishing an Institute of Sports. But as with many major commitments, we need to start cautiously.

Certainly it is wise to invest in sports that we can excell in. And our Sports School has gone in that direction in the main.

However, it is also important that we continue to scout for local talent to boost up the pool and to expose them to relevant competitions.

For Malaysia badminton, there seems to be a quite a gap between LCW and others in MS. The juniors have still some way to close the gap. Not so for MD. This is an interesting development, the difference between MS and MD and I wonder why?

 

so what if he has never won a single title outside mas as #1??
as long as he is still world number 1 in badminton MS

 

Yes.It is.but we tend to forget the need to have a good system in order to keep them developing,which im sure u are well aware of it.

 

Nothing is wrong with having LCw to win outside Malaysia.Cool down.He will rite?
Im sure Lee chong Wei is well prepared for any criticisms against him.
Jaguh Kampung and what not..Still a jaguh what..??

 

Hi,

I'm currently writing my dissertation on a study on the effects of the Foreign Sports Talents scheme on Badminton in Singapore.

Please could you help me to fill out a survey at the following webpage:

http://www.smart-survey.co.uk/v.asp?i=24361xqjvk

Thank you very much for your help!

P.S. It'll be great if you could pass this on to your family and friends as well. Thank you once again!!!

 

Ok. Done. Hope you are successful in increasing the standards of local. All da best.

 

Cantona recently gave his opinion on the Decline of English Football.

Does the same apply to Singapore?

Not exactly apples and apples. but close enough to compare

 

Derek Wong seems to be okay. He will probably not make it to the top level but he has potential to be a slight threat. See whether he improves or not. Ashton Chen is another one.