By
Rahim Abdullah: We have always lived in a society that had practised diplomacy, and exercised plenty of discretion. The brutal truth, was generally buried under the rubble of tact and restraint.
Although I will always take great pride in being a member of the first and only Malaysian football team that has played in the Olympics, the 1972 Munich Games I will always have to live with the dubious honour of being the coach of the first Malaysian team to lose to The Philippines (1-0) in the 1991 Sea Games.
To me, it was a disaster from Day One. I was a reluctant coach. I was named by technical director of the FA of Malaysia then, the late N Raju. I politely declined because I wasn’t ready. But I was compelled to change my mind by a high ranking official to take on the job. My assistant was Bakri Ibni.
Both of us didn’t really get to apply our ideas, because Raju took the training sessions, he ran the team. And when there was a study tour of Europe that came up, he jumped on it and dumped the team on us. So, we left for Manila, with a team that Bakri and I had little influence over.
And if that wasn’t bad, team manager, the late Dato Bakar Daud dictated the team list. He would not come for training, or friendly matches, but on match days he would decide the lineup. When we dropped one player who wasn’t match fit and had not been serious in training, he put him back on.
We had no say in the team, and we even couldn’t make changes on the pitch, because that too was done by Dato Bakar. We had no say in the team. And I couldn’t go against him because I was a new coach, and he was also part of the FAM big brass.
I was angry with all this, my hands were tied by officialdom, and there was nothing I could do, despite me knowing that some players were not honest in that match. On my return, I wanted to officially report my findings to FAM, on what I strongly believed was foul play that caused the uncharacteristic and humiliating defeat by the hosts.
But even that, I wasn’t allowed to do. I was told by the same official who compelled me to take up the national team job, that the then FAM President Sultan Ahmad Shah, wouldn’t like to hear that, if it wasn’t backed by strong evidence.
So here I was, standing before the FAM Council to deliver my report, without being able to talk about the interferences in team handling and tactics, and the strong suspicion of match fixing. And as diplomacy and restraint were the order of the day, I reported to the Council, that we didn’t have good strikers, because in the M-League the strikers were mainly foreigners, this depriving our local players of these opportunities.
Until today, when people talk to me about that defeat, I would feel ashamed, and angry. I feel angry because it was all beyond our control.
Still, there were some good memories. And some pride and pleasure. For instance, I was in the starting lineup in the opening 1972 Olympics match against West Germany. I was actually very surprised. Coach Jalil Che Din didn’t quite like me because I didn’t call him ‘Tuan’, as he was a Prison warden then. But the manager, Dato Harun Idris was a very fair man.
I was in the starting lineup mainly on the insistence of German, Dettmar Cramer, whom we got to know when he conducted some coaching seminars for the Asian Football Confederation in Kuala Lumpur. Cramer was adviser to Jalil for the Olympics.
But as luck would have it, I picked up a yellow card, and sure enough Jalil substituted me. We lost 3-0 to the Germans, after holding them to a goalless draw at half time. But our match against Morocco, where we lost 6-0, was a disaster from the start. I blame the late Karl Heinz Weigang for this.
Cramer invited Weigang for the team briefing, and the latter said the Moroccans were ‘dirty’ players, that they were rough and would spit on their opponents. Our players were already rattled before the match, and couldn’t play our normal game. Before we could recover, we were already 4-0 down, and the Moroccan players were not as what Weigang described them to be. Besides, keeper Wong Kam Fook was not well, but Jalil insisted on playing him because he didn’t have confidence in our second keeper Lim Fung Kee.
But on the whole, this small town boy from Nibong Tebal, Penang, did well, I think. I played among the greats, had some really good matches, and feel quite accomplished.
My only regrets were bowing out of the national team at the age of 25 because of serious injuries, not being in control of the 1991 Sea Games squad, and not being able to expose the truth about meddling officials, and dishonest players.

By
Windsor John: In our journey of life, many will come into our paths, through family ties, friendship, colleagues, and people we know on social media.
Some of them, will be like ships passing in the night. Some, stay on a little bit longer and touch a part of your life, before they leave. And then there are those few who will leave huge imprints in your life that stay with you, even long before they are gone.
My journey in football, I believe, was through divine intervention.
My baptism in football was by my late father, John Paul. He was a player and a referee. Apart from training me on the basic foundations of the game, he also took me with him to matches he was officiating in. The early exposure, was to set me on a course that only God could have charted.Growing up in this family, where my uncles and cousins were either into coaching or playing the game at a high level, made this path seem even clearer to me.
And it was through this divine intervention, that two personalities were placed in my life, playing contrasting but very significant roles that would shape my football career, and define me as a football official that I am today.
These two men, who had left those huge imprints that not only won’t be washed away by the sands of time, but served as my tutors and mentors, are the late Dato’ Seri Paul Mony Samuel, and former Malaysian football great Dato’ M. Chandran.
Paul introduced me to professional management and administration in football. He was indeed a unique personality, a larger than life character who will be ready to assist anyone coming to him for advice. His biggest advice to me was to drop my idea of pursuing a career as a coach and instead focus on football administration. He said, “You are a teacher and you have both languages at your disposal, don’t waste time in coaching”. That ended my dream of becoming a coach. But looking back now, at what I am today, that advice turned out to be a defining one in my career, and even in my life.
Dato’ Paul as he was known for many years in the football circle, and just Paul to his close friends, had a wealth of knowledge about the game, not to mention its politics too. As the General Secretary of FAM, I guess he needed to be armed with the wiles of politics, as he had to deal with some powerful Barisan Nasional politicians who were heads of their various state FAs. And he acquitted himself quite admirably, considering many of these leaders were not easy to please all the time, more so all at the same time.

I believe, he had much less stress or anxiety dealing with the monarchy in the FAM ranks. In fact, I believe FAM president Sultan Ahmad Shah, and deputy president Tengku Abdullah Sultan Ahmad Shah, were the least of his concerns in FAM. Paul actually was able to function the way he wanted to, because he had their support.
He was always thinking on his feet, and he had answers bouncing off his fingertips. Which was why, he emphatically advised me to never step into a meeting without being prepared with answers for questions that could be asked. He would say that we need to be at least two steps ahead of the others, and not be caught with our pants down, and looking clueless and disoriented.
I doubt he was ever caught in that position. Even the media, who would leave many an official in FAM red-faced in press conferences, always found Paul, a worthy ‘adversary’. I dare say, even the well-informed sportswriters found him enlightening.
I found this enlightening myself, as through this experience, I was able to confidently handle the international media as General Secretary of the Asian Football Confederation, and even the various stakeholders in Fifa World Cups, as a General Co-ordinator.
Something else that caught my attention, which also provided an invaluable insight in my football upbringing, was his preference to be at players’ lounge, or in the players tunnel, when as the GS of FAM, he should be watching matches from the VVIP stand.
When I asked him why he did that, he told me that he would not be able to remain impartial and advise the Disciplinary Committee on the offences without prejudice, if he saw the incidents himself. He said that one should only base one’s case on the reports presented by the match officials. Of course this was way before video could be admitted as evidence.
He was also very particular with minutes-taking and would require the minutes on his table 48 hours after the meeting. He would say that it’s better to write when it was still fresh in the mind.

When he was the FIFA Development Officer, he would expect my report on his table the next day after I arrive from an overseas mission. Which is why, until today I finish the reports either in the airport lounge, or in the plane itself. That was the training I had, and it was a legacy that I passed on to my subordinates as well.
Working seven days a week and 365 days a year was normal for Paul, and he also expected the same from his team. If there was one thing which I did not compromise with him, it was going to Church on Sunday mornings. But I always made it to office after lunch.Work was his passion and his life. Anything else was optional. I remember family members would try and get his available date for family functions, so that he could attend. And still, he would miss a lot of them due to his travels.
The one thing he did not master till the end was the use of the Computer even though he had one at his table. He used it to play solitaire, a card game that required one to be sharp. I realized that while he was physically clicking on the mouse, his mind was elsewhere on football matters.
My only argument with him, not sure where I got the nerve to do it, was in 2008, when I encouraged him to resign from FAM, as he was not happy. And this was not normal for a man who loved his work more than anything else in his life. Coupled with the fact that his health was eventually taking a beating from his punishing schedules and regime, it seemed the best decision. He was reluctant at first, but was shortly forced to throw in the towel, as his health just got worse.
He had a very short temper and not known for his patience, but would forget about the issue so quickly that you would wonder what was all that about. For the man he was, he actually loved simple Indian food including ‘dhal curry’ and brinjal puree. He also loved traditional cakes.
He told me not to lend people money but rather give them something and not expect anything back from them. Our parents have been debtors but we should be givers and not lenders. He also advised me to have two separate bank accounts – one for my monthly salary for expenses and one for other allowances I would receive doing additional work like competitions, tournaments and events.The second account was my savings, which I did religiously and was of great assistance in my later years.
Dato’ M. Chandran or M. Chandran or Chan back then was a player I grew up admiring. I remember following my father when I was small all the way from Kedah to Kuala Lumpur to watch the Merdeka Tournaments. He was a big name in Malaysian football during my growing up days and nearly everyone knew his name and wanted to be like him as well.
You can imagine the shock and also joy when he met me one day in 1991 and offered me the of position of Trainer to the Selangor team playing in the M-League and Malaysia Cup. It was a dream come true for me as I had just passed my FAM Advance Coaching Certificate and was eagerly looking to make my career in coaching.
It would not have been easy for him to convince the officials in FA Selangor as I was not from Selangor nor played for Selangor at any level. I cannot imagine what he would have said to them and bearing the risks that came with it.

Until today I had have not asked him why he picked me and how he managed to persuade the Selangor management.
Once can learn integrity, discipline and right work ethics from Chandran’s values which I was told was with him during his playing days as well. He was meticulous with accounting and accountability. Every expense was accounted for, and supported by the relevant invoices and receipts.
A man with a no-nonsense attitude and few words, he was feared and sometimes disliked for his coaching methods which focused on conditioning work, physical fitness and positional play.
Diplomacy is not in his blood as he does not mince his words. If there was something that needed to be said for the greater good, he would just come right out and make his point. If he thought it wouldn’t bring any benefit, he would remain silent.
But Chandran, was very, very disappointed and hurt, when it was revealed that some of his trusted players in the team of 1992 were exposed in the 1994 match fixing crackdown. I am not sure if he has forgiven them for what they did to him and Selangor football.
That’s who he is, a man of honour and dignity. He was a silent achiever, who let his achievements speak for him.
A man of very few words and one who minded his own business. In all those years I have known him, he still brushes off any attempt to speak ill of anyone.
Which is why, many will have only good words and memories about their relationship with him.

By
Christina Kwok: I was only 13 years old when we first “met”. Seems a bit young, now when I think back… but it was all very innocent . I remember being in my father’s “temporary office” located in one wing of the Merdeka Stadium during the 1968 Merdeka Football Tournament . He walked in – he saw me, I saw him.
We next laid eyes on each other a few months later – again at Merdeka Stadium – after another football game. He was bounding up the stairs to the F& B on the top level. I was standing by the ticket turnstiles – again, waiting for my father to finish whatever he was doing, and to go home.Halfway up, he yelled to me “I didn’t recognise you!”…to explain – I had undergone a small metamorphosis – changed my spectacle frames, hairstyle, and perhaps grown taller. I was by now 14 going on 18… and since I was rather tall for my age, I guess many people thought I was a lot older than I actually was.

And that was that – my father showed up, ready to go home at last, and off we went.
A few days later, I was at home – upstairs, watching TV –“ Mission Impossible” in black and white, and the phone rang downstairs. It was around 9-something in the evening, and we hardly received any phone calls after 9pm.
My parents were out, brothers in bed, maids in their room. I dragged myself downstairs and picked up the phone and spoke with a rather abrupt “Hello”. At the other end, a rather deep voice, said “Hello, may I speak to Christina please?” “Speaking…who’s that please?” He asked me to guess – and I couldn’t for the life of me guess who !! Well, the rest, as they say, is history.

If you are amazed that over 50 years later, I can still remember this so vividly, it will give you a measure of the impact and influence Chow Chee Keong has had on my life .
There followed years apart – me in the UK completing my education, he in Hong Kong pursuing his football career – he was the envy of many of our friends, “playing” and getting paid for it! We saw each other in a good many summers, when I was back in Malaysia for the holidays and it was off-season for him.
We eventually tied the knot when I was the respectable age of 24, and then it was back to Hong Kong for another few years as a married couple, before settling down back in KL. Adrian came along shortly after, and Chee Keong was

by now focused on embarking on a second career as a professional golfer.
Adrian has only really known his Dad as a golfer. But he has been privy to observing his father’s discipline and tenacity of purpose in “practice practice practice”.
In 50 years, a couple in a relationship can amass a ton of ups and downs – and we were not spared the downs. But what did not kill us made us stronger. One of my close relatives used to say – Chee Keong was the kung fu master, and I was the one who successfully carried the burning Shaolin pot across the bridge…and then came back for more!!
Looking back, I learnt many life lessons from him and from “the other side of the track”. We came from pretty different worlds, but from the beginning, we knew there was this “thing” between us – and whatever this “thing” was, it carried us through till the end.
Beyond soul-mates, beyond the unspoken common values, beyond the excitement and passion, beyond being best friends, the love we shared took us to heights and depths .
We had plenty of good times, fulfilling times and also trying times…but hey, whoever said it was going to be easy with the likes of Chow Chee Keong?!

By
M.Karathu: Tunku Abdul Rahman’s contribution to football in Malaya and Asia, remains legendary. He was the father of football.
He built the Merdeka Stadium in 1956 for our country’s independence. The following year, he launched the Merdeka Tournament, the first international friendly tournament in Asia. Apart from the Asian Games every four years, the Merdeka Tournament, was the biggest football event in Asia and it was played annually.
It attracted top Asian countries like South Korea, Japan, India, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Thailand, South Vietnam, Burma,and Indonesia back in the days. For these countries, it was the only international tournament where they could hone their skills. It was the most talked-about tournament in Asia then.
When you had a Prime Minister who was also the head of football in the country, you know for certain that the sport will thrive, with Government support.
The civil service absorbed footballers into their departments, thus prompting parents to be supportive of their children’s love for the game. Football, in fact sports generally, was an integral part of our lives. It was part of our culture, and it bred and cultivated unity among sportsmen and even women of all races and religion.
There was no segregation of the races. During centralised training, the managers weren’t looking at us by race or religion. They only saw Malaysians before them. Malays, Chinese and Indians were housed together. We ate the same food that was halal. We prayed openly in our own ways. And we felt the spirit of brotherhood.
There wasn’t a need to inculcate us with the 1Malaysia spirit, as we were already practising it spontaneously, and we were growing up. No one had to teach us about unity, we were already united.
I must draw reference to this one incident that happened in 1967. It was in the Asian Cup tournament. We were playing against South Vietnam in Hong Kong. We were leading 2 – 0, and there was 10 minutes remaining in the match. A Vietnamese player kicked our goalkeeper, Lee Soo Phang, and he had to be immediately taken to the hospital.
Vietnam had already changed two players. The referee showed him the yellow card, but he could still continue the next ten minutes. We were furious, and rushed to the Vietnamese player and harassed him so much that he walked out of the field.
We were one in spirit. There were no Malays, Chinese or Indians, we were Malaysians in mind, heart, and spirit. Immediately after the match, we visited Lee in the hospital, to show our support. It’s hard to see that kind of team spirit in our players these days.
In training we develop our national pride, and commitment to the nation.
Our home was the dormitory in Merdeka Stadium. Our coach was the late Choo Seng Quee. He was a fierce disciplinarian, and a great nationalist. Before we start our training, we have to sing the national anthem every morning at 5.00am. We sleep and eat together as one family, and representing our country was our priority.

Other than dumb-bells and benches, we didn’t have a gym to do strength training. From Merdeka Stadium, we used to jog to Kuala Lumpur Lake Gardens, which was about 10 kilometres away. At Lake Gardens, we would run up the hill slopes to strengthen and develop our muscles.
We didn’t complain about the pain or the fatigue. We were doing this for national pride, and coach Choo, will not hear any of our complaints anyway.

There was one occasion in training, when we had to do laps around the stadium. It was 5am, and it was still dark. One of the players, who couldn’t handle the strain of training, hid in the dark side of the stadium. But the experienced coach, counted the number of players who ran past his post. and he noticed one was missing, and knew who he was.
During breakfast, he told the player to pack his bags and return home. I still remember what he said, even though it was more than 50 years ago. Choo told him and us generally: “When you cheat in training, you are cheating your country too.”If a coach was to do that today, he would have been sacked, and the culprit will be pardoned. That patriotic spirit of fighting or dying for your country on the playing field, isn’t there anymore. Indiscipline is condoned, and it doesn’t matter to players if they win or lose, as long as they get their fat salaries.
I am just glad, that I came from an era where unity was a given, patriotism was not an option, and football was the pride of our nation.

By
Terence Netto: In 1973, when I began as a cadet reporter in New Straits Times, I was made quickly aware that Dato’ Harun Idris’s magnetism as a sports leader was a byword among senior sportswriters. He was a charismatic politician whose love of sports resembled Tunku Abdul Rahman’s and he shared the founding prime minister’s confidence that the medium would unite the diverse peoples of the country. Harun had studied at Victoria Institution, renowned spawning grounds of the societally eminent, and after graduating in the law from the Inns of Court in London in the early 1950s, became legal adviser to the Selangor government later that decade. He was president of the Selangor Football Association.
As manager of the highly successful Selangor state team in the national league, Harun rose in the ranks of the Football Association of Malaysia to become vice president by the mid-1960s. Simultaneously, he was manager of the national football team, a tenancy that would be marked by increasing success as Malaysia won the Merdeka Tournament in 1968, after a title-drought of several years, and qualified for the 1972 Munich Olympics, the first time we ever did.

In tandem with his sports-leadership career, Harun’s political ascendancy gathered pace. It accelerated after he became leader of the increasingly powerful youth wing of his party, Umno, which by the early 1970s had become the dominant force on the political scene.
Umno Youth became assertive. The social engineering process afoot in the country gave it newfangled prominence. Under a leader whose public profile was rising on the national sports scene and whose political eminence was embellished by his state’s heft in the national economic scenario, Harun, by the mid-1970s, had become prime ministerial material.
Local sports leaders and organisers drooled in anticipation of a premiership by someone who they were sure that, because of his knowledge of sport and ability to collate advice from experts, would lever the country to prominence as a contender for honours in regional, continental and global arenas.
Football was the country’s most popular sport. The qualification of the national team to the 1972 Munich Olympics was regarded as a sign of its potential for entry into the higher echelons of the international game.
Harun was the manager of the team that qualified for the Munich Olympics in 1972. At that point, he had been manager of the national team for several years, with the qualification to Munich the high point of his tenure. Harun was widely regarded as a players’ manager, in the sense that he knew how his players felt and he made decisions in their and the team’s best interests.
A case in point was the exclusion of striker Syed Ahmad from the team bound for the Munich Olympics. A prolific goalscorer who starred in the qualifying round held in Seoul a year before the Olympics, Syed Ahmad had problems with discipline that were particularly serious during a tour of Europe the squad underwent in the lead-up to the Olympics. Harun, a stickler for discipline, backed coach Jalil Che Din’s decision to drop the recalcitrant striker from the Olympics-bound squad. It seemed that a player’s formidable on-field standing would not be allowed to outweigh what was considered to be serious defects of discipline. Although Harun was mainly a football-focused sports leader, he was keen on other disciplines, especially when these threw up on the national stage formidable exponents from among Selangorians. As chief minister of the state, he was interested in how sports performers born in the state fared in national competitions.
He was known to support these performers when they were in need of aid he could procure for them as the CEO of the state.
1975 was a year of great moment in Malaysian sport. In March, the Malaysian Hockey Federation staged a highly successful World Cup that premiered to rousing crowds and scintillating play. In June, Kuala Lumpur also saw the staging of a heavyweight boxing match between the legendary Muhammad Ali and Britain’s Joe Bugner. For a brief period between March and June, it seemed that Kuala Lumpur was the capital of momentous happenings in world sport.

No doubt, it was a blue riband year. But this auspicious year came with an ominous lining for Harun. He was instrumental in getting the Ali-Bugner match staged in Kuala Lumpur, with matters to do with the organization of the event handled by a newly set-up company called Tinju Dunia. The company would become the subject of police investigations that led to Harun being indicted for corruption in November 1975.
By March the following year, Harun was found guilty and sentenced to prison. The case’s outome presaged the eclipse of a politician-cum-sports leader that many felt was best equipped for leading the country at that stage of its evolution.
In the perspective of the decades gone by, the corruption case against Harun came to be regarded as a political prosecution. His evanescence from the national political and sports scene also came to be viewed as deletrious to our prospects in both arenas for reason of a perceived ability to strenghten the best purposes and suppress the worst instincts of a motley democracy.
By the time of Harun Idris’s death at the age of 78 in September 2003, his eclipse and eventual demise was viewed as tragic, in some sports circles at least. Tragedy is amputation: the strands of memory run to the what-might-have-been had he not encountered the fate he did.

By
Gerald Kwok: When you live with a legend called Chow Chee Keong for so many decades, you lose much of the awe and it has to be deliberately recalled. Worse still when you’re born into my family, surrounded by other “legends”.
As son of the late Datuk Kwok Kin Keng, former Honorary Secretary of the Football Association of Malaysia (FAM) and one of a small group of pioneers who brought Malaysian football and the FAM up from obscurity to probably the most “heavyweight” and strongest established national sports associations in the country by the time of his passing.
Sure there was my Dad but there was also Tunku Abdul Rahman, Malaysia’s first Prime Minister. I do believe that Dad, whom the Tunku affectionately called Ah Keng, always tried to hide me, his source of eternal embarrassment, from view all those evenings I drove him to pre-Council briefings at the Prime Minister’s residence in Jalan Kenny.
But the Tunku always wanted to know – “Who brought you here, Ah Keng? Oh! Your son.” – followed by a cheery wave in my direction.
There was also Uncle Pete – Datuk Peter Velappan – probably the highest-achieving Malaysian ever in terms of status within AFC and more so within FIFA, who recently reminded me that he was already working with Dad .
And, during innumerable tea-time sessions at our old Conlay Road house, all the likes of Uncles Chye Hin, Govinda, Boon Lay, Kee Siong, and the rest, would never tire of swopping stories of glory days past when all my kid brother Dennis wanted to do was wolf down more of those famous Imbi Road currypuffs and doughnuts, without being obvious.
Then along comes this legend Chow Chee Keong. Join the queue, dude.
That he was a legend, there is no doubt. But, for me, it wasn’t about hype and glory. And because of this, my take on Chee Keong will never be anything you would read, hear about or see on TV.
Chee Keong remains one of the strongest characters and forthright personalities I have ever known or will have the privilege to know. For me, it wasn’t about his audacity and absolute, supreme confidence, the kind that allowed him to somehow pluck the ball from the very toes of that even bigger legend – Pele – with a gaping goalmouth on offer, during an exhibition match in Hong Kong.
Instead, allow me to present another take on the audacious Chee Keong. As our Dad headed up Malaysian football in his time, we, his kids, used to pretty much have the run of Stadium Merdeka.
One Merdeka Tournament – I think I was around 11 years old – we were, as usual, hanging around the Secretariat in the Stadium, waiting for Dad. I can’t remember what I was playing –definitely nothing intelligent or productive – but I do remember looking up and seeing this great, green-clad, muddied form checking out my sister Christina.
I instantly flashed red, burning with indignation. What absolute cheek! Who is this muddy buffalo and what makes him think he can just go up and chat up my sister?
Then I look past the mud and I go…. “Whoaaa! That’s Chow Chee Keong!” And promptly had nothing further to say.
From that point, began a story that has been more than 50 years in the telling, a story coloured with its share of Romeo and Juliet style star-crossed lovers stuff.
My Dad was absolutely possessive of his favourite daughter and no way was just any old legend going to come by and sweep her away. No way, no how. So it was tricks aplenty all the way. I can’t give away any trade secrets here but it would include things like us telling Dad, “Sis and us gonna watch a movie today ” which movie we’d never, ever, have to pay for but it would always be me and Denis watching the movie from the front rows and Chee Keong and Christina watching from the back. Like the very last row, right at the very back.
Those years were also years stuffed full of learning, from spending time with and observing first-hand the character traits of one of the strongest men I knew.
Chee Keong was one of the best guys ever to watch football matches with. He could read the game so well he would tell me unerringly this is how the attack will proceed and defenders will have to watch out for this and if they don’t, then this is where the goalkeeper should position himself to secure his goal. It was as if he could see the future and provided live tactical analysis I have never heard, even from the super-pundits on live English Premier League broadcasts.
One game, in particular, he always delighted in watching with me, the same game I always had the deepest dread of watching but he never let me get away. That game was Burma vs South Korea, on the occasions they were pitted together during Merdeka Tournaments. Burma would line up in brown and South Korea in red, which for someone like me with red-green colour blindness, meant they looked like they were wearing identical colours. Chee Keong knew this and he would be beside himself at the look of utter confusion on my face and especially when I’d be shouting, “Aiyoh! The goal’s the other way!”
But one of the games that I did most like to watch was Burma vs Malaysia, with two of Asia’s best goalkeepers on the same pitch: Chee Keong for Malaysia and Maung Tin Aung for Burma. Not many know they were very good friends off the pitch.
Tin Aung called my sister from Burma immediately upon hearing of Chee Keong’s passing – and they had the deepest respect for each other’s prowess. But that never stopped them, even in the tightest of games, from having their private round of one-upmanship.
Chee Keong would pull off a tremendous flying save, then get up and I could almost see him look clear down to the other penalty box as if to say, “Top that, buddy”. Then, on Malaysia’s next attack, Tin Aung would pull off an equally spectacular save, get up and look clear to the other side as if to reply, “Now you top that”.
There was much more serious life learning, as well. Chee Keong was ever the sharp dresser, whether to a glamorous celebrity event or to famous satay and ice kacang at the old Campbell Road open-air stalls, a favourite stop after watching matches at Stadium Merdeka. Never fasten the top button of your suit jacket, never push your shirt in completely flat but leave just a neat tuck edge over your belt. I never quite had his knack. He and his buddy Chak Sum used to practise Shaolin Tiger and Crane styles in addition to Karate at the old dojo on one of the back roads off the Loke Yew Road. He laughingly told me it was to outsmart Karate guys with (for whom he had little respect) but this training kept him always alert and watchful – always keep your back protected, always position to see everything in the room in front of you.
Whatever he would share, I eagerly gobbled up and even this abridged version was enough to get me through numerous weekend bar brawls during my student days in Brighton.
Practically everyone who truly knew him would tend to describe him using “humility” or “a very private man” or similar. I think it was more that one had to gain his trust – he never gave his trust away, you had to earn it. Chee Keong never said much when meeting someone for the first time. It wasn’t shyness or disinterest in the person. Rather, as he listened, he was “reading” you. Your eyes, your face, your stance. He was looking at you but he was seeing all of you. Two sentences later, he already knew how much or how little he would trust you.
The one thing he did trust implicitly was the strength of his mind and body, honed by years of rigorous training to do exactly what he wanted it to. Like all true sportsmen, he dedicated himself to the discipline and the craft of his sport. He trained to get the best from himself, whatever the sport he had chosen. I could see him commit to the grind, endless hours repeating every little action again and again till it was perfect.
He always knew talent only takes you so far but it takes hard work and lots of it to rise above the ordinary. For Chee Keong, to be the best he could be wasn’t an ego trip – it was his way to represent the best of the game in himself and his efforts and, in so doing, be absolutely true to his sport.
Honour and respect for his discipline and craft was everything to him. Which was why he was dead set against any form of impropriety like match-fixing. Indeed, he was very proud that he never, ever, took one cent in that way. Anything that compromised his integrity and dishonoured and disrespected his discipline and craft was anathema to him. He took it very seriously.
Honour. Dedication. Discipline. For me, that was what the legendary Chow Chee Keong was all about. The stuff of his legend would never be hype and glory but that of force of will and steely resolve. A strength of character and an uncompromising integrity.
Relentless determination to use every iota of his talent to carve his pathway out of the “wrong side of the tracks” he had been born into. Unwavering devotion to duty and sacrifice to use whatever he earned to fund his younger brother through University and give him the start and the life Bill Chow now has in the USA.
Most of all, his legend was that of an unconquered spirit that rose above anything that life could throw at him …. disappointments, false promises, the fickle and temporary mirage that is fame and superstar status. That was my legend.
Compared to him, I was like some pampered princeling who had lost his way. Yet he loved me and he shared with me his hard side through my growing up and part of that steel helped me conquer my own disappointments, false promises and fickle friends.
Chee Keong has ever been more a big brother to me than brother-in-law. The hole you leave inside me, brother, I cannot fill. Travel well and go in peace.
Legend. Brother. Forever.