DELTA LEAGUE DELTA LEAGUE Changing Lives Through Football ALI KASIM MESSAGE BY MR MASAGOS ZULKIFLI BIN MASAGOS MOHAMAD 6 FOREWORD BY MR NG JOO HEE 8 PREFACE BY MR TAN KIAN HOON 10 12 Chapter 1 How It Began 30 Chapter 2 Coming of Age 54 Chapter 3 Going National 78 Chapter 4 The Stories 98 Chapter 5 The Future APPENDIX 114 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 118 The Delta League has also given our youths will be many more of such achievements to an opportunity to interact with Police officers celebrate in the future. This published work and life coaches, as well as participate in builds on our national efforts in partnership community service activities. I am heartened with the youths and is indeed an important to see the Police, the National Crime contribution to local crime prevention Prevention Council and other community literature. Everyone, including family, friends MESSAGE BY partners working together and providing and the community-at-large, has a part to MR MASAGOS ZULKIFLI BIN MASAGOS MOHAMAD the necessary network of support that these play in reaching out to youths and working SENIOR MINISTER OF STATE, MINISTRY OF HOME AFFAIRS AND FOREIGN AFFAIRS youths require in their formative years. with them to lead productive lives. Through the strengthening of such support circles around them, these youths are better I hope that you will find this book an insightful able to develop and mature over the course of and meaningful read. their involvement in the Delta League. Their In the two years since the Delta League was simultaneously promoting a series of self- participation in a wide variety of programmes conceived, I am glad to say that it has achieved improvement and crime-awareness activities. has allowed them to harness their talents, considerable success in its efforts to engage I have seen the League triple in size from 16 creativity and energy positively. and shape the lives of our youths. teams in 2011 to 48 teams across the island today. This is quite an achievement, and I This book documents the milestones of the The Delta League has used the world’s most hope that the League will continue widening Delta League. The stories in the book are popular sport, football, as a key medium to its scope to include more youths, while staying inspirational, heart-warming and showcase involve youths in healthy and meaningful true to its original mission of engaging youths the difference that Delta League has made activities during their school holidays, while to steer them away from crime. in the lives of these youths. I hope that there 6 7 This is precisely our motivation for creating athletes, counsellors and other well-wishers the Delta League and putting it on year after – have come together to co-create a superior year. Youthful exuberance, when coupled outcome for our young people. with aimless idleness, is often a source of much tomfoolery. It is best that the excess I am really happy that the Delta League energies of our school-going youths during has grown, from casual kick-abouts FOREWORD BY the long school breaks be channelled towards between police officers at Clementi and MR NG JOO HEE productive purpose. neighbourhood kids, to become an island- COMMISSIONER OF POLICE wide initiative. Our challenge is to turn it into What better way, then, than to have them a truly national movement, using football to learn and play the beautiful game when touch many more young lives and help keep school is out? Along the way, it is our hope them out of harm’s way. that the youngsters will learn about hard The mission of the Police is to prevent, deter But in crime and public safety, as in public work, teamwork, resilience, discipline and the and detect crime. health, prevention is always better than cure. rewards that come with practice. No one prefers to get cancer so that he can Detecting crime is, of course, the most familiar be cured of it. Similarly, in crime-fighting, Singaporean communities possess an inbuilt and the most publicly visible thing that the prevention and deterrence are always better ability to discourage deviance and maintain Police do. A crime is committed; we are told than detection. One more crime prevented order. And the Delta League offers a wonderful about it or find it out ourselves; we then take or deterred is one less victim of crime and illustration of how the Police and the action to solve the crime and endeavour to one less harm incurred. community – in this case, the National Crime bring the offender to justice. Prevention Council, educators, professional 8 9 I am greatly heartened by the support for was launched only in 2010. The fact that a the Delta League by stakeholders. The most book is produced after four editions of the recent edition in December 2012 attracted League is testament to the accomplishments almost 1000 youths, forming 48 teams to of the programme and how it has benefited compete to become the champions of the thousands of young participants. Not only League. During the finals at Jalan Besar does this book give insights to the variety of PREFACE BY Stadium, what I saw were not just talented enriching activities organised for the youths, MR TAN KIAN HOON football players pitting their skills against it also illustrates the focus on nurturing and CHAIRMAN, National CRIME PREVENTION COUNCIL one another, but newly empowered youths educating them to become good citizens. charging towards a brighter and better future. I would like to record my sincere thanks to all There and then, they were cheered on by their the partners, sponsors and volunteers who relatives and friends sitting at the grandstand. have contributed to the success of the Delta NCPC recognises that family involvement, League and made a difference to its young The National Crime Prevention Council Partnering the Singapore Police Force to augmented by support from friends, forms participants. This programme is yet another has been engaging Singaporeans on the organise the Delta League is a natural and an important component of Delta League’s fine example of NCPC and SPF working importance and the means of preventing critical progression toward our common multi-pronged approach to engaging youths closely with the community and stakeholders crime for more than 30 years. While Singapore objective of raising public awareness of meaningfully and keeping them away from to tackle crime in an ever-changing security enjoys one of the lowest crime rates in the crime prevention. NCPC is privileged to work negative influences. landscape. Crime prevention is a shared world, our programmes and the role of NCPC with SPF, especially the officers at Clementi responsibility, a collective effort. have evolved over the decades, as there is a Police Division, in the production of this I applaud Clementi Police Division’s efforts need to consistently review and re-look our commemorative book. in putting together the material for this book I hope you enjoy this book and the messages approach and involvement. within a short period of time. The Delta League it brings you. 10 11 1 THE IDEA for the Delta League sprang from a question: how could youths be meaningfully occupied during their school holidays in order to steer them away from crime? A platform for engaging these youths was needed, preferably a healthy one that Singaporean teenagers could easily take to. For quite some time, various youth groups had been playing ad-hoc football games with the officers from Clementi Police Division. Division Commander Melvin Yong noted visible benefits on the ground as a result of his officers’ informal interaction with these young footballers. For one, the youths responded well to the mentorship of the officers, and spent their free time more constructively than they otherwise would have. When his Division spearheaded the Ministry of Home Affairs The Delta League logo, designed by PLUS Futsal competition for secondary schools in early January Fairuz Ariff, from Clementi Police Division. The Delta League was 2011, he similarly observed a heartening level of camaraderie so named because it originated in Clementi Police Division, whose established between the students and his officers. call sign is “Delta Division”. Delta (∆) is also used as a symbol in mathematics and the sciences to This gave Yong an idea for a new way for the Singapore Police represent “difference” or “change” – aptly encapsulating the League’s Force to engage with youths. mission of changing the lives of youths through football. 14 15 “Usually, our Community Liaison and Preparedness Officers engage with schools, who then identify the students whom the officers should give a talk to,” he said. “But I started to question if this was truly effective. Did the students want to be engaged this way? “The fundamental question was raised: ‘How do we bring the students to us?’ When we looked at the profile of the youths involved, we found that football was something that engaged The Delta League’s official the majority of them.” banner for the inaugural June 2011 grand final Players from Queenstown Secondary School (in blue) and Queensway Secondary School (purple) in action on the field It was then that he decided to leverage on the effectiveness of football as an engagement method, and organise a structured 11-a-side football league for youths. The Delta League was born, and planning of its inaugural Queensway Secondary School players warming up season began in March 2011. Held across the four districts of the Clementi Police Division – Queenstown, Bukit Merah West, Clementi and Jurong East – officers from the respective Neighbourhood Police Centres helped scout for and supervise four teams within their group.