Rain puts a Dampen on a Perfect Day For Kamikaze

Veterans Friendly @ Yusof Ishak Secondary School

Kamikaze Veterans vs Uncle's United

The Kamikaze Veterans team played yet another friendly with an encouraging turnout at Yusof Ishak secondary. While the game did not start according to plan, with the Veterans conceding an early goal, the mood in the camp was bouyant with everyone in high spirits to enjoy a day of recreational soccer. The high spirits led to an improvement in the play, as Jayaseelan scored a sensational goal, in a virtual carbon copy of Cristiano Ronaldo's finish for Real Madrid against United, after excellent work by newcomers Sangaran and Riyaz. Kamikaze started peppering the goal with more threats and their persistence paid off. Yasin showed exceptional touch, strength and vision as he held off two defenders to thread a through-ball to Vishnu who showed a cool composure to give the Veterans the lead.

However, just when things were going into momentum for the veterans, heavy showers accompanied with lightning and thunder put an end to the proceedings with the game being called off with the Veterans leading 2-1.

The spirit of camaraderie and enjoyment of football are the key pillars of this Veterans team and the boys sure enjoyed their day out even though it was cut short by Mother Nature.

KAMIKAZE!!!


Squad: Pratip, Nesh, Hari Atom, Aravin Yeli, Sangaran, Jayraj, Hasiim, Riyaz, Sivabalan, Seelan, Yasin, Vinnie, Ghazali, Dinzo, Vishnu, Haresh, Victor, Premnathan, Jaya, Prabhu Pixel

Goals: Seelan, Vishnu
Assists: Sangaran, Yasin

Final Score: KKZ Veterans 2 - 1 Uncles' United (Game abandoned at 45 min)

Kamikaze Seniors Get Off To A Flying Start

X-League Sunday Prime League Season 1 Division 2

Team Kamikaze vs Ginga FC @ Greenridge Secondary

The first game jitters never materialised as Kamikaze Seniors took on Ginga FC in their opening league match encounter. Kamikaze dominated from start to finish as they banged 13 goals past their young opponents in a ruthless encounter to win the match 13-1.

Kamikaze started gutsy from the word go and could have gone up within the first 5 minutes, but for a lack of finishing. However, the goal did eventually come in style as Pratheep Muse cut past 3 defenders before unleashing a perfect finish that the keeper had no chance of saving. The floodgates opened, as Victor, Jayraj and Aravin Yeli made it 4-0 to go into the half-time.

Within minutes of the restart, Ginga pulled one back and gave themselves some hope. But that goal only served to give KKZ the impetus they needed as a flurry of goals came through the other end. Siva notched his hat-trick, while Yeli went one better by bringing his total game goal tally to 4. Victor bagged his brace, with Anand Spaceship and USPO Suresh also getting in on the act with cool finishes. There were many contenders for goal of the week, but Suresh's goal after an excellent throughball from Haresh, and Yeli's superb individual effort at the end won the plaudits from the KKZ faithful.

Overall it was a satisfying performance from Kamikaze, however the constant offsides proved to be of some concern to Manager Seelan. But in a typically combative mode, he dismissed any suggestions that the strikers department were of concern to him. "We scored 13, and my strikers got 5 of that haul, and you are asking me whether they need to improve? You must be kidding me!"

Kamikaze have started this league in an exciting manner and now look forward to their next match with a spring in the step. Captain Suresh, however put things into perspective when he said, "There is no need to put any extra pressure on ourselves. Prior to the start of the league, we aimed for a top-3 finish, and nothing has changed with this game."


KAMIKAZE!!!


Squad: Theiva, Ashraf, Uspo Suresh, Jayraj, Haravin, Dinzo Dinesh, Dinesh Manjan, Anand Spaceship, Pratheep Muse, Victor, Siva, Haresh, Aravin Yeli

Goals: Pratheep Muse, Victor (2), Jayraj, Aravin Yeli (4), Siva (3), Spaceship, Uspo Suresh 
Assists: Manjan Dinesh (2), Pratheep (2), Haresh (2), Spaceship (2), Siva (2), Victor (1)

Final Score: Team Kamikaze 13- 1 Ginga FC

KKZ Youths Post An Emphatic Victory

Goal Arena Sat League Season 3 Eastern Division

NEFC vs Kamikaze Youths

The juniors continued their good form by scoring 5 past a determined NEFC to win what was only their 4th game this season. The junior Samurais seemed to have put their shaky start behind them as they scored early through a corner as Ashraf headed home emphatically. They were pegged back by NEFC but that only served as impetus for the team to take a 3-1 lead courtesy of Shivanan and Vishnu. The second half saw NEFC pull a outrageous goal to halve the deficit, but Kamikaze put the scoreline beyond doubt through a Vinnie wondergoal and Haravin opening his account for the Juniors. There is a real mood of optimism in the KKZ camp that they could end the season strongly.

KAMIKAZE!!!


Squad: Dinzo, Ashraf, Nesh, Bharat, Haji, Hasiim, Shivaanan, Shameem, Tzai Wei, Vinnie, Vishnu, Arjun, Hari, Victor, Haravin, Premnathan 

Goals: Ashraf, Shivaanan, Vishnu, Vinnie, Haravin
Assists: Shivaanan (2), Hasiim, Tzai Wei, Vishnu

Final Score: NEFC 2- 5 Kamikaze Youths

Contract System

As part of our self-renewal, efforts are now being taken to streamline the Kamikaze set-up. We have already launched the Veterans team to encourage recreational football as a way to keep fit and keep our bonds growing strong for the retired players. It will also act as a platform for players returning from injuries to regain fitness before making a charge at the Senior team. The next area of focus, the management will be looking at, is to calibrate the Youth squad.

The Youths are now in the final stretch of their 4th League season. While they started off brightly, coming in 3rd place in their first season, they have not managed to recapture that form in the subsequent seasons. While there are many factors at play here, it must be noted that several players have been giving their all in terms of performances on the pitch as well as their excellent commitment off the pitch. Having had the pleasure of coaching this excellent crop of players, the management now feels that the time is right to reward players for their excellence.

On that note, the KKZ management is pleased to introduce yet another innovation in the Youth set-up, the awarding of central contracts. Central contracts are a feature of professional sports teams where players are graded and contracted for a given period where their benefits and obligations are spelled out according to their respective grades.

Kamikaze, has been on the forefront of running our amateur team as a professional set-up and this is our latest step to instill professionalism within our Youth setup. At the end of this current season, which is fast reaching a close, players will be assessed and graded by the team management in what will be known as the 'Grading Exercise'. At the end of the Grading Exercise, players will be informed of their respective contract grades and the rationale for their given ranking, before the results will be published

Tentatively, we have decided on 4 grades, A, B, C and free-contracts. The detail of the grades will be published at a later date. As of now, the management wishes to stress that this is a innovation that applies to the Youth setup only. The rationale is a simple one. We have to create an environment where merit is rewarded. The grades will be as a result of one's performance in the previous season and will only last for the subsequent season. This approach will bring about a competitive environment where players are given incentives for performing at exceptional levels. The end result will be a successful cycle, where Perfomances bring Rewards and Rewards boost Performances.

Kamikaze has always prided itself on being a leader and an innovator rather than a follower. This central contracts system is another project that we feel, is necessary at this point of time to help calibrate the influx of players into our Youth Team as well as identify future leaders who will step up as pillars in time to come.

KAMIKAZE!!!

KKZ Youths Come Painfully close

Goal Arena Sat League Season 3 Eastern Division

Kamikaze Youths vs Liverton FC

The first leg ended with the the Youths losing 7-1 in their biggest defeat to date. The return fixture looked set to follow the same script as the Youths were down 3-0 within the first 20 minutes. But this team, is soon acquiring the never-say-die spirit of their Seniors, as they battled back to grab 2 goals, before time ran out to grab a point. In all honesty, a lack of clinical finishing, was a pivotal reason on why the Youths could not do better. Arjun, Prabhu, Shivanan and Bharat gave an excellent performance to once again remind the Kamikaze faithful on why this crop of youngsters are rated so highly.


Squad: Deva, Ashraf, Nesh, Bharat, Premnathan, Hasiim, Shivaanan, Shameem, Prabhu, Vishnu, Arjun, Tzai Wei, Victor, Haresh

Goals: Shivaanan, Victor
Assists: Shivaanan

Final Score: Kamikaze Youths 2- 3 Liverton FC

Ignite the Flame of Sports

The below is a copy of the email I sent to the Hon'ble Acting Minister Chan Chun Sing

Dear Mr Chan,

I have been contemplating on writing this email for several weeks now. The only reason why I kept putting it off, is because I feel that one should let others do their job. Especially, when highly qualified people are appointed to the job. I did not want to come across as a griping netizen complaining for the sake of it. However, I have been reading your interviews and I get the impression that you are a person who genuinely wants to make a difference to galvanise the community. As such, I feel that by taking the liberty to send in this feedback, I am actually doing the right thing for our community as well.

Im sending in this feedback with regards to the 2030 Sports Masterplan that your ministry has drawn up. On a personal level, I am a huge sporting enthusiast. I watch a wide range of sports, enjoy playing a variety of sports on a recreational level and have taken part in many amateur-level soccer competitions. In fact, we have our own amateur soccer team, that even boasts a Youth wing. So, this Sports Masterplan is of utmost interest to me. However, I do realise that playing sports on an amateur level is not the same as galvanising the sports fraternity. Hence, I will try to write this in an objective manner.

Community

Sports has always been an activity of uniting the community by the community for the community. As such, I believe that any strategies that we put forward to galvanise sports must involve the community.

I propose a 2-pronged strategy. 

1) Promote sports as an ideal recreational activity. This i believe, your ministry has been doing a fantastic job, and the gains made must be continued. I applaud your ministry for taking the right steps,

ie) making booking of facilities accessible through SSC, creating many avenues for mass participation through PA

2) Make sports a viable career. This area sir, is where I feel that Singapore as a society is seriously lagging. If the bulk of our professional table-tennis players are all new citizens imported from the talent scheme, then I don't believe that it is a lack of talent sir. I believe, that it is so because Singaporean families do not see sports as a viable career. And maybe rightfully so. Our young local S-league players are paid miserly contracts of less than $2000 and they have to buy their own boots. Contrast this situation to our neighbour like Indonesia, where players are paid in US dollars, given accomodation as well as vehicles, the situation can not be more extreme. But why this disparity sir? This i will explain in the next section.

Television

Sports has evolved to a stage, where any strategy will fail if you do not engage the community, if you do not get the community involved either, as participants or as audience. However, in our fast-paced world, it is impractical at this stage to expect people to throng the stadiums or halls to watch a netball game, even if our Singapore national netball team are pretty good in the region. This is where I believe the power of TV will be crucial. Bringing on the dimension of broadcasting will create interest in the sports. It will then bring in the advertising money, which can be rechannelled to building more infrastructures for the sport. Our current strategy of enticing interest in sports through Singapore Pools gambling tickets is outdated, dear Sir. I propose another 2-pronged approach on bringing in the TV money to galvanise the sporting fraternity.

1) For people to watch something on TV, they have to get involved. And it is difficult to ask someone to feel involved with a bunch of croatians and nigerians playing in our Sleague. Even if you were to telecast it free, no one will be tempted to watch. I suggest, that we have to go down to the grassroots. Broadcast matches, that involve our schools. The A'divisions, the Inter-Varsity Games, the B-divisions. Showcase matches, that involved someone's son, someone's niece, someone's brother and sister. This i feel sir, is a far more effective strategy to get people to watch the sports on TV. As the viewership increases, advertisement money will surely come in. When that happens, you achieve 2 goals. a) Interest in the Sports b) Money to be channeled to develop

2) Currently our free-to-air channels are showing several imported programmes. Some of this can be replaced by showing these events that I mentioned above. Very similar to how the US promotes its university basketball, which then acts as a platform for talented young sportsmen to make the jump to go into professional sports teams. By stimulating interest in the grassroots level, and promoting entry by locals into the sports teams, I then feel that locals will be more tempted to watch the sports at the professional level. This will turn spinoff, into several of our little-known local leagues, like the netball league, bowling league being shown on TV. Again sir, this is an effective way to build the sports industry.

Synergy

Currently Sir, there are 400 over amateur soccer teams, playing regular weekend 11-aside football from 9-am to 5-pm every Saturday and Sunday. There are a further 100 teams taking part in regular 5-aside weekday futsal leagues. That is over 4500 amateur footballers playing weekly football. If you were to draw a study to compare the numbers on how many of them actually get the opportunity to represent a professional club, Sir, you will be dismayed. There is no proper talent-scout programme or a channel to give talented players a chance. The money would rather been spend on marquee names. Such a strategy sir, will not lead the sports fraternity to grow. In fact, sir, it will destroy the sports fraternity which can be seen by the state of our S-league. There is a simple reason why our Lions 12 boys get more support. And its not just national pride sir, it is the fact that these boys are our brothers and friends and people who have played with us. And sir, if you were to look at other sports, the situation is even more worse. Back in PRe-U, i had several friends who were talented athletes, netballers, rugby players. But as they grew up, they had very little avenues to pursue their interests. Even if they did, it was down to their own initiatives, rather than a platform being provided to them. Again sir, I will not just make a mere complain but I propose a strategy.

SSC has to take a more active governing role while encouraging private league operators to act in a uniform manner. Now, all the private league vendors are acting on their own and are profit-minded, rightfully so. I propose for the SSC to make infrastructure more readily available to these vendors, eliminate the red-tape involved and bring them in as part of the discussion to see how we can unify the schedules and timelines so that we can have a well-run amateur fraternity. For this part, SSC should not take a running role, but more of a guidance role while letting the private vendors communicate and synergise their efforts. The platform is already well-set for soccer, hence it will be easier to carry this out for football and then roll on to the other sports.


Once again sir. I hope I have not come across as contemptuous or radical. What I have proposed are simple strategies to calibrate the plans already put into place. When you came out to talk about the 2030 Masterplan, I detected an earnest enthusiasm in you Sir. But you are a minister and it is impossible for you to always be in the ground and observe every intricate details. And thus as a participant of sports, it is my duty to feedback the situation to you as well as provide what I feel are useful improvements to galvanise the sporting fraternity. When the day comes, that Singapore has the most vibrant and effective sports scene in South-East Asia, Which by current standards is a tough order, I will be a much satisfied person. The road is tough, but if we achieve this together, the benefits are countless. Thank you.

Yours Sincerely,

Vicknesh Rajamohan

Mentor of an Amateur Soccer team named Team Kamikaze,

Sports lover since the age of 5

Update to this story: The Acting Minister for Community, Culture and Youth had emailed me his reply as Sports is under the purview of his ministry now. I am unable to reproduce his reply in whole as it is Restricted but the gist of his reply was that his ministry was looking at working closely with all the stakeholders and welcomes this feedback that will help his Ministry in implementing the plans to galvanise the sports.

The Flame Lives On

A goal is often like a fire. It starts off with a spark of inspiration, but it also needs the right set of circumstances to enable it to succeed. When Team Kamikaze was founded in 2004, if you told any pioneers that they would win 2 Championships and 1 Cup in 9 years, you would have gotten derided. For those were days where the team's self-confidence was sky-high and there was a belief that Kamikaze would win every single match they played. But, reality soon set in, and when the dark days came in, it was thought that KKZ would disband without ever winning a Championship title. But just like a withering flame's desire to keep on burning, Kamikaze stood true to their motto and never gave up.

This blog's fortunes are very much similar to the history of Kamikaze, understandably so. Whenever, the blog looks to be finally dead and over, it is resurrected with pomp. The same can be said about the team; Just when we were written off by all quarters we came back with a bang to bag our latest title.

And now the journey continues once again, with the team making its foray into the X-league. The systems in Kamikaze are also very much in place, with a Veterans team being set-up for recreational play catered for those looking to build fitness, maintain friendship and play pressure-free football. Our Youth wing have come through a baptism of fire in their tough inaugural season of Goal Arena, as a much harder and stronger team. Such experiences will only serve to ensure that the spirit of Kamikaze will live on for many more years.

While the blog remained dead for more than a year, it was heartening to see many requesting its update. There were many readers who felt that the blog served as an inspiration for them. At this point, I must reiterate that the times then were different. We were forging an identity and it was important to have a connection to foster team unity. That was the purpose behind the hyperbole spewed in the writings then. As times went, work schedules increased and the team also found itself bonded. As such, the need to have constant updates for the blog was understated. However, the time is right now for the blog to once again make a comeback to continue tales of our various exploits.

On his part, the Editor leaves you with these parting words. A fire provides light. A fire provides warmth. If handled improperly, a fire can destroy all around itself, but never will a fire die down without a fight. Even in its last few gasps for oxygen, the fire seeks to give its very best to do what it sought to do. As Albert Schwitzer once said, "In everyone's life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit."

The flame of Kamikaze was lit up by many. The onus now is to keep it burning for many more generations to come.

KAMIKAZE!!