A Saturday, and the BC's genial GM BT stands rock steady, looks around him, takes in the scene and smiles. A smile of approving satisfaction at a life’s work almost complete. On one soccer pitch, the Club’s “regular” team stride purposefully to a 4-1 win in the EFL Cup against Credit Suisse, booking a berth in the semi-finals. BT, whose son GT orchestrates the win with a powerful performance in the pivotal midfield role, silently contemplates the possibility of yet more silverware for the heaving trophy cabinet in Reception back at Bukit Tinggi.
On the adjacent pitch, the Club’s fledgling “Corinthian” side makes its debut against local opposition from PWC. They lose 4-1, but the result is not important. This is the start of a new venture.
Club Football Section Founding Father and Member Mentor AM patrols the sidelines, clipboard in hand, shuffling his team and issuing urgent edicts to his puffing, panting players. For some, it’s a chance to kickstart a stalled footballing career. For others, it’s a rare opportunity to exercise and tone up. The inaugural side included sextegenarians down to Members’ sons and daughters, sold a game of football as a way of parental bonding. The kids run, the older players trip and fall as gravity and ageing limbs rebel against directions from young-at-heart heads. For others still, it’s a useful run-out on the way back from injury.
There’s room for improvement, but these are early days.
At the “pavilion” end of the field, white-clad members of the Club’s resurgent cricket team “warm down” after another convincing win. The curry can wait. They sense a deep camaraderie evolving, a rich brotherhood carved from sporting endeavour. Some meander over to cast a closer eye on the football – an alien game they quietly profess not to understand. Not a gentleman’s game. Tut-tuts and meaningful glances are shared around when the footballers angrily berate the referee for a missed offside call or a lunge from behind. They wander back to their warming beers, lost in reverie at what might have been … the boundaries that stopped just short and produced mere singles, the whiplash cutter that passed within a whisker of the batsman’s stumps, the skied catch lost to a blinding sun.
Between the soccer pitches, on the all-weather cricket strip, footballers’ wives and girlfriends congregate under the shield of sponsors’ umbrellas, discussing what only WAGs discuss, and occasionally looking up to check what’s happening on the pitch. They cheer the goals and share their partners’ pain at a thudding tackle. Here’s a Sudoku puzzle book, there’s a dropped stitch. Water bottles and sun cream tubes litter the ground. A tartan picnic rug dangerously hugs the touchline.
Soccer kit-clad boys whoop and holler, running between and around the pitches, giddy with the excitement of fresh air, exercise and blessed release from computer screens and PS3 consoles. Southampton, Reading, Derby – not the glamour strips, but kids dressed to please their dads in what Santa brought them. They dribble, pass and shoot, silently nursing the ambition and hunger to one day wear the famous red and blue of the BCFC – and wear it with pride and passion to continue the legacy laid down by their pioneering fathers.
Injured and “rotated” squad players drop by to idle away a Saturday afternoon, passing comment on team mates, exhorting and exalting in equal measure. Social engagements are cemented, business anecdotes swapped. It’s tough not to be playing, but they play their part merely through being present. It’s a duty, a calling. To stay home is remiss. This is bonding on a massive scale, on a Club-wide scale. A Sporting Cornucopia. Family Fiesta.
A welcome cooling breeze wafts across the field, the surrounding trees flicker momentarily. The Bukit Timah traffic rumbles by, oblivious to this corner of a foreign field that will be forever …
BT smiles again and deftly uncaps a bottle of Premium Lager from the ice-box. BC Members, one and all. His family … many of whom will pile back to the Club for post-match drinks and meals, to review the afternoon’s sporting events, and swell the Club’s F&B coffers.
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