Written by: Phoon Jia Hui

Great Eastern Yeo’s S.League side Albirex Niigata (Singapore) has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the Yuhua Community Sports Club (CSC) for the second year running.

Held prior to the White Swans’ opening league match against Brunei DPMM at the Jurong East Stadium on Saturday, the MOU will see Albirex donate $1 to the Yuhua CSC for every fan who attends any match at their home ground for the 2014 season.

In attendance at the MOU signing was Guest-of-Honour Miss Grace Fu, Adviser to Yuhua Grassroots Organisations, Chairman of Yuhua CSC Mr Lim Chock Sing as well as Albirex Club Chairman Mr Daisuke Korenaga.

Last year, Albirex donated a total of S$19,386 to Yuhua CSC over a total of 13 home games, revealed Korenaga who aims for more this year.

“We are not satisfied with just S$19 thousands donated to Yuhua CSC last year.  We want more.  We want the Yuhua residents bring their friends from other constituencies to come and watch our games in Jurong East so that we can easily pass the S$20 thousands donation mark to Yuhua CSC,” he said.

“As a foreign club playing in the S.League for the 11th consecutive year, we are pleased to have up to 70% of our fan base Singaporeans. We want to reach out to more local fans, in particular residents in Yuhua division, where the club is based.”

Apart from donations, the club had also been actively involved in community outreach and will continue to conduct football clinics for youths. In return, Yuhua CSC will help put up Albirex match information at all Resident Committees’ (RCs) notice boards at HDB Blocks to allow residents in Yuhua to gain first-hand information about the team.

This year however, Albirex are looking at other ways to further make their presence felt.

Said Korenaga: “We also want to expand our Albirex-Yuhua family bigger to not just only football but we are also looking to be involved with Yuhua in other sports such as swimming, running, etc. so that we can be a full-fledged Sports Club in Yuhua.

“These activities show that Albirex is very serious about reaching out to the local community despite being a foreign club.  In fact, we always view ourselves as a local club and doing all the things that a local club would do.”

Miss Fu then expressed her delight at being able to work with Albirex again and hopes to garner more interest for the sport in the community.

She said: “We are quite happy with this cooperation as you can see there’s a collaboration not just about supporting each other financially, (through) Albirex donating to the community but also the fact that we are involved in joint development of talent from a very young age.

“I think that’s the more exciting part to us. Having coaches helping us in our football clinics, we hope that’s a start to build interest in the sport and also to promote the sport within the community.

“We’ve had a successful year; the coaches have been helping us with many of the coaching sessions. We are continuing this and doing more and we see that some of our young players are also getting involved and (more) interest in Albirex. With this, we hope that the league could get involved with the community and see more interaction and greater interest in the sport.”