hahahahah. Youre a real hermit wallowing in your own dung.
New Zealand's population is slightly smaller than Spore & yet they can reach the World Cup TWICE with home grown players.
So what the fish youre talking about Spore with a small pool?
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the way the government do it is wrong, they are like Real Madrid, they wanna buy success, in pursuit of results, they choose the shortest and most direct way, buy talents. But because the rules don't allow them to buy established players that have already represented their country, they bring them in young with potential and train them, these players do nothing but training and given relatively high pay (for doing nothing but play ping pong day in day out). Now they won the medal - everyone in the government come out to say good things and bask in glory.
local players? You start off joining school team, represent school team..ok, you are good, you get selected and go through a special program to groom you at may 9,10 or 12...you train intensively but not full-time, you have to balance your schoolwork which also demand your attention. You have to cope with exams, you hve to cope with demands of making the grade in both school work and playing. Do this to a young kid, does he have the capacity and maturity to do this? Ok, so you make it to the national team or national junior team, you face against these Chinese or whatever imports who train more than you. You probably don't make the grade, you end up as a sandbag, a sparring partner..
You start to think...a sportman's playing career is short. A few years past, you are 40, then what? Maybe you have the qualifications but you don't have the neccessary work experience - you cannot get a decent job outside. There aren't that large numbers of table tennis coaches needed. There isn't a professional league here in Singapore where you can go into management. China, Japan, or Korea - they have an established system, they don't need you.
You shudder at the thought, your parents thought of this, and then they jack you out of the system and ask you to concentrate on studying and not playing ping pong.
Just because Dai Yang Tian looks good in that ping pong show doesn't mean ping pong players make it good. All the worse for local breed players...u are no fight against FTs who do nothing by train and get paid.
You have this non-existant infrastructure - how you expect Singaporeans to feel proud that we won? In fact, I don't give a hoot...I don't feel happy at all. I rather we don't participate.