What’s a sporting event around the Padang that’s better than F1?

It’s held at and around the Padang, it lasts a week­end, it brings in teams from around the world, it’s got beer girls and after-parties, but it’s not the F1 GP.

It’s a sport­ing event with a way longer his­tory — 62 years — played at the Sin­ga­pore Cricket Club’s grounds in front of city hall, and there is no more hal­lowed turf in Sin­ga­pore than The Padang.

Though it’s multi-purpose nature stands it apart from cricket’s The Oval or Lord’s or rugby’s Twick­en­ham, The Padang (lit­er­ally trans­lated as ‘The Field’) has a far longer his­tory than the soon to be demol­ished National Stadium.

And although it doesn’t have the Kallang Roar, every sin­gle ACS boy my age and slightly younger will remem­ber the Great Padang Riot of 1984, when a fired-up ACS boy decided to run the school flag around the field before the start of the U-17 National Schools Grand Final between ACS and Raf­fles Institution.

Around 1,000 ACS boys of ages rang­ing from 10–16 saw the flag fly­ing around the field, over the heads of the RI boys on the SRC side of the Padang, when appar­ently one RI boy took offence at the taunt, and decided to trip the flag bearer.

One sharp-eyed fella from ACS saw that the flag bearer had fallen with the flag, and shouted some­thing that ended with “… the bas­tards!”, and the next thing we knew, the entire con­tin­gent of ACS boys had swept across the field and grabbed any­one dressed in all-white, teach­ers included, and tried to pum­mel the day­lights out of them.

Back in the grand­stand, the head­mas­ters of both schools smiled and nod­ded politely to each other. There was not much they could do, really, except wait for the riot police to arrive with water cannons.

I don’t think there’s been a more vio­lent inci­dent since, and we were quite happy to be invited to the SCC Inter­na­tional Sev­ens tour­na­ment last weekend.

Well, I was invited, but I wran­gled a pass for Naomi, Kai and our helper, hop­ing to make it a fam­ily out­ing. I was eager to show Kai the famous tour­na­ment his Papa played in 20 years ago as a school­boy, even though he won’t remem­ber a sin­gle thing from the weekend.

It was a good call — there were kids every­where, and I don’t think the F1 race would have been as family-friendly — and that’s what we’re after in Sin­ga­pore, aren’t we? More kids? More fam­ily events? Surely not gas guz­zling, air pol­lut­ing, eardrum burst­ing race cars going round and round?

Best of all, there were no road closures.

Plus the for­mat of sev­ens rugby is great — 7 min­utes a half, 10 min­utes a half for the final makes for dun­no­how­manygames a day for the 25 odd teams from far flung coun­tries like Kenya, Fiji, Scot­land, com­pet­ing with the likes of the NS Wan­der­ers from the town of Serem­ban in Malaysia, and the fast pace and unpre­dictabil­ity is even bet­ter — the Serem­ban boys beat the Scots on Day 1!

I had a great week­end show­ing my wife and son the grounds, and regal­ing them about how, back in my day, we used to have to take off our jer­seys between games and lay them flat on the grass to dry before the next match.

It’s just so good to see one of the country’s old­est sport­ing events still going strong. More impor­tantly, it’s gonna be around when Kai’s old enough to appre­ci­ate it. Or dare I hope, play in it.

P.S. Con­grat­u­la­tions SA Vipers for your hat­trick of titles.