Community wants closed fields to be re-opened until development starts

Sunday, 08 January 2012 09:55

After making the call for the re-opening of the Padang Railway in Brickfields, Kuala Lumpur, a veteran footballer S. Raymond, 53, said he was inundated with calls from people who wanted to help.

“Most of these people are from areas like Subang Jaya, Klang and Ipoh Road who have seen their playing fields sacrificed for development,” he said.

“They are also keen in joining us for the friendly match that we are organising once we get the field opened,” Raymond said.

He said he would be writing a letter to the developer and the Federal Territories and Urban Wellbeing Ministry to re-open the field until it was time for development.

“So far the Hong Chin club and the Brickfields RT have expressed interest in helping us get the field opened for sports.” he said.

StarMetro earlier reported that a group of veteran footballers, who played during the 1970’s and 1980’s, want the authorities to remove the hoarding and open the Railway field which has been closed for the past 15 years.

The group comprising S. Raymond, 53, R. Vijay Sundram, 52, Karuppiah Munusamy, 55 and S. Jayaratnam, 52 want to hold a friendly match to rekindle the interest in football on how it was played during their time.

Football lover Thomas Samuel urged the Kuala Lumpur City Hall (DBKL) to be more proactive in their initiatives to return the field back to the community.

“Forget the fields that we have lost, but something can and must be done to save the remaining ones now.

“Another such field in Jalan Ipoh, Sentul, has been fenced and left idle for nine years.

“City Hall should now take the responsibility to look into the plight of the surrounding community in the spirit of 1Malaysia and try to return the fields to the community.

“Both these fields have been used for football, hockey and cricket training earlier.

“We hope the mayor will do something about it,” he said.

Samuel said building sports complexes could not justify taking away the fields as the low- and middle-income community could not afford to pay high fees to enrol their children in clubs.

“In the 70s and 80s, passionate footballers comprising mostly parents train the young every evening and there were many teams and competitions were stiff.

“But nowadays the concept of community coaching has died. Players need to be trained since young and going to a sports complex and learning how to kick a ball will not do much good,” he said.

Samuel said with more fields being used for development, it was no surprise that statistics showed that only two in 10 youths took part in outdoor sports and the number of obese children was growing.

“Those days, our national football team was at par with Japan and South Korea, but today our standard has dropped.

From The Star