April 26, 2004
National Football League (NFL) established in 1975, used to be local football premier competition but that was before the introduction of the S-League in 1996.
Since then, the NFL, which is made up of three divisions, has been put in the shade as the promotion & development of the S-League became the focus. Now the oldest domestic football competition in the Republic is being ridiculed, some even calling it the "National Forgotten League".
There were disgraceful incidents this season that have highlighted the sorry state of the NFL. There are also admission from clubs officials that there are clubs who does not conduct training sessions. They said even the Centres of Excellence of S-League clubs have issues over a lack of fields, what more the NFL who have neither prestige nor money. They felt is a disgrace & it is not the way to run the NFL.
To stop the rot, the Football Association of Singapore (FAS) said they are preparing a paper on how the NFL and football at the grassroots level can be improved.
FAS director of competitions Quah say the paper will not only focus on reorganising the NFL, it will also look into other aspects of football at grassroots with FAS technical director P N Sivaji adding the paper will determine what role the NFL has to play in Singapore football set-up.
Tampines Rovers SC president Collin Chee felt that the revamp is "long overdue". He feel FAS should decided how important the NFL is to Singapore football. It is no use for anyone to just sit and watch the NFL go deeper into the mire hence losing their place in Singapore football.