14th ISCI Hockey Festival, Jakarta (24-27 May 2013)

RSC made their annual trip to Jakarta for the ISCI Hockey Festival at the end of May (24th – 27th). This was the 14th edition of the fun filled tournament sponsored by San Miguel.

The team left on Friday morning and upon checking into the Hotel, straight went out for some local food. Unfortunately, the choice of food was not very good but the beers thereafter made up for it.

The Welcome Reception was held on Friday night at the official hotel, The Part Lane, which was attended by all the foreign teams. It was a good time meeting up with old friends over some food and drinks.

The 8-a-side tournament had 18 teams (8 local and 10 foreign) divided into 3 groups of 6. Each team had to play a minimum of 5 games.

The tournament started on Saturday morning at 8.30 a.m. RSC’s first game was at 9.50 a.m. and was against Valley RFC (Hong Kong). We won 2 – 1. Our next game was some 4 hours later, so there was sufficient time for some Nasi Ayam and lots of San Miguel. We played against Sathya (Malaysia) and won 1 – 0. Our last game for the day was another 3 hours later against SCC (Singapore). We won 2 – 0 even after more San Miguel.

We had our team dinner on Saturday night at the Immigrant. The workers at the restaurant were given a lesson on how steaks should be properly cooked by our expert Chef Harry. The good company made the night.

The tournament continued on Sunday morning at 8.00 a.m. Our first game for the day was at 9.20 a.m. against a young local college team (Alzaytun). We held them as long as we could and eventually lost 1 – 0. Our next game some 2 hours later was against another young local team (DKI Jakarta). We held on to a 1 – 1 draw. After that it was Nasi Ayam time.

We finished second in the group and qualified for the Cup Competition. The quarter-finals saw us play against another young local team (Alumni). The game which was played at 2 p.m. went on to extra time wherein 2 players were taken out every 5 minutes. Left with 4 players on each team, our old legs could not take it any longer and we lost 1 – 0. That was the end of our tournament and it was San Miguel full time after that.

The consolation for our team was that we lost to the 2 teams that eventually reached the finals. Alzaytun beat Alumni 2 – 0 tobecome the 1st local champions of this tournament.

A big thank you to all the players who made the trip to represent RSC. Also to our Convener James, Uncle Bala and Chef Harry for the support in the beer tent. Last but not least to Harnam andGurnam for the entertainment during the trip.

A bit of this and that...

First up, apologies for the slow traffic on our blog site... The editor has been rather caught up with things of the world, such as work, work and more work!

The weekly sessions are still on-going despite the occasional interruptions (this month's sessions on 18/6 and 20/6 have been cancelled due expected water supply cut at the stadium area). Dato Poon and Colin Sta Maria, with the support from James Sia continue to arrange games week in, week out. Thank you for your dedication and hardwork to keep this going!

The Kelab Aman tournament which was scheduled in May has been postponed to August (or so we were informed). Meanwhile, the boys had a good outing in Jakarta for the ISCI tourney which took place at the end of May - We are still waiting for the report on that!

The annual PSC tournament is scheduled in the 3rd week of June, but it unfortunately clashes with the RSC AGM (or EGM, sorry it slipped my mind), and with a heavy heart, we have opted to skip this year's tournament.

We have also been invited for the Liquorice-All-Stars tournament in August. The inaugural tournament was held last year, and we participated under the stewardship of Siva Subramaniam. More information to come soon via email.

The RSC 9s will be held in October this year, in view of the fasting month in July. As usual, the committee is already hard at work canvassing for teams, funds and volunteers. All interested parties may contact Ommen Koshy for more details.

The committee has also made it a point that the Hockey section is represented in every edition of the Berita RSC, and this upcoming issue is no different. Do check it out!

For the next edition, we will have more hockey history to unravel, and to show our appreciation to the people who have contributed to the section all these years.

Signing off for now.... The Editor