Thanks to Nicholas, Hillary and Daphne, I was invited to watch the games of the Singapore Slingers at the Singapore Indoor Stadium in the Singapore Challenge Series. Yes, I mentioned ‘Singapore’ 3 times in the last sentence. Sue me.
For the uninitiated, the Slingers is a Singapore professional basketball team which were founded in 2006 and have been playing in the Australian NBL for the past two seasons. In order to continue in their plans of playing in an ASEAN professional league, they have withdrawn from the Australian NBL in July this year and set up this interim competition held in Singapore to prepare them for the direction that they are undertaking.
I heard of the Slingers early last year through newspapers but being a football player, the news of such a local basketball club had me as interested as a lion with a plate of cabbage in front of it. After hearing about the team again through a few bloggers followed by the bugging invitation from Daphne, I decided to bring along KuKuNehNeh (KKNN) and watch the 1st two games of the Slingers against a Philippines team called Air21 which were played on 16th and 21st of September.
What can I say! After watching the two matches, I AM A CONVERT! The action on the courts were fast paced, the players were no amateurs and there were plenty of drama with many heated moments during the games. KKNN is totally attracted to a Slingers player called Eric Sandrin and during last game on the 21st, she was shouting at one point going,
“ERICCC~!!! I LOVE YOUUUU~~~!!!!!”
Eric Sandrin, if you are reading this, my girlfriend has never shouted ‘I Love You’ to me before. I want to strangle you if not for the fact that you are one of my favourite players from the team. Of course there are other factors like you being 2.06 metres tall and having all that strength but I shall not go into that…
Eric is a total joy to watch. Besides looking the part with his Korean-American heritage, he is a monster on the court with his defensive and attacking capabilities and I totally dig his aggresive style which rile up the opponents and that creates chaos on the courts when the opponents fail to keep their cool. There are many more gems in the Slingers team like the sharpshooter Darren Ng who is a doctor by the way and blogs over here. I shall stop talking about the players from here onwards before this turns into a 1000 word essay and turn you readers away.
Support the Slingers and be their 6th Man!
The thing that is apparent and very sad is that the turnout for the opposition team was much more than the people who came to support the Slingers. Do run over to Sistic’s website or Slingers website to find out how you can purchase the affordable tickets to their games. Trust me! You won’t regret it!
Or if you are a blogger, please email me using the contact form found here and I shall try to get you guys some complimentary tickets.
Next game is on the 30th of September (Tuesday) at 7.40pm! I can’t wait!!!!
[All images are from the Slingers Official Website]
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