Football fans across the country were rubbing their hands in excitement after the football FIFA World Cup third-round qualifying draw on 30 July.

Singapore avoided Asian powerhouses Japan, Korea, Australia and Iran. They were instead grouped together with China, Iraq and Jordan, the latter two which the Lions have beaten at home.

The Lions overcame their fiercest rival, South East Asian Champions, Malaysia 6-4 on aggregate to book their place in the third round only for the second time in their history.

With a real chance to reach the final round of the football World Cup Asian qualifying round for the first time, Raddy Avramovich must be eagerly looking forward to the their opening match against China on September 2 at Kunming.

Preparations have not been the most ideal. A gaping hole has emerged in central midfield.

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One Voice

Events in September

It has been about one and a half months since Vision 2030 was launched.

Vision 2030 is an exercise to chart Singapore sports in the next 20 years collectively with the public-people-private sectors.

Unlike previous exercises where sports plans were created by government policy makers and the sports fraternity, Vision 2030 is actively engaging the public in co-creating the sports masterplan. Underpinning this new approach is the fundamental belief that sports benefits everyone – be it for individual development, community bonding or nation building.

The public has heeded the call for ideas and in this short duration, we have garnered more than 400 ideas and more than a thousand subscribers at the website (vision2030.sg) we created specially for the public to share their ideas.

We have also received ideas from other channels such as focus groups, emails, snail mail, social media sites and even through the mainstream media such as radio talk shows where the public called in with their ideas.

The enthusiastic response from the public underscores the belief that sports clearly brings value to society.

Even as we write this message, staff at the SSC and the sub committees that were set up to assess and evaluate these ideas are working hard to put them together and come up with recommendations.

Our next phase of public engagement will see us distilling some of the best ideas and developing them further for public consultation. We will also launch a Vision 2030 Facebook page to provide an additional channel and medium for discussions. With Facebook, you can not only read and participate in discussions, but also view video links, photos and the like to better understand the concepts that are being discussed. For example, if we are discussing about new facilities concepts that are found in other parts of the world, we can share that through video clips to give readers a better idea of what we are talking about.

As we continue the conversation with the public on Vision 2030, the stories of sports continue to excite, inspire and motivate us. In this issue, get excited by our Lion's preparations for their next stage of competition in the World Cup qualifiers as they take on China on 2 September 2011. Will they prevail? Be inspired by the story of Singapore's Special Olympics football team which won gold and our other Special Olympians which brought back a record medal haul at the recent Special Olympics. Their achievement speaks volumes of the human spirit and overcoming difficulties.

Till the next issue.