End of season puzzle creates bizarre finale
The 2002-03 Hong Kong football season should be history by now. Two seasons after abandoning the ersatz Grand Final, the championship, for the second year in a row, was decided between the two top teams in the last match of the league season on Saturday. Happy Valley lifted the trophy and everyone got ready for their summer holidays. Or so they thought.
Instead the sides concerned, Happy Valley and Sun Hei, are being called back into action at Mongkok Stadium tonight for a match it seems nobody wants and few seemed to know about.
'They told us after the game on Saturday. It's strange. I find it strange. Naturally, it's immaterial. I don't know, I don't know,' said Sun Hei coach Koo Luam Khen, uncharacteristically running out of words.
'We found out immediately after the last game on the 26th,' confirmed Happy Valley manager Lim Fong Kee. 'What a laugh! It's crazy.'
The Hong Kong Football Association's problem is that it needs to find two representatives to take part in next season's AFC Champions League. The formula decided upon was for the League champions and the League Cup winners to play-off for one place - hence tonight's match - and for the FA Cup and Senior Shield winners to fight for the other one, which is where the problems start.
The second playoff would also feature Sun Hei, this time against South China. Should Sun Hei win tonight, that place automatically - although arguably unfairly - goes to the Caroliners. However the latter's ambivalence to another Asian campaign after last year's five-goal mauling at home to a weakened Shimizu S-Pulse, only makes this evening's match seem even more unnecessary.
'I don't mind letting them have the positions if they want them. If they don't want them, I don't mind taking part,' said South China director Peter Leung Shou-chi. 'Everything's not yet decided. I don't know what will happen. We'll decide later on.'
Neither Sun Hei nor Happy Valley, however, are willing to make such a commitment. After Sun Hei forsook their opportunity to enter this season's AFC Champions League, Valley initially filled their place, before baulking at the cost of entering the first qualifying round. Both clubs say that if they win this evening's game they'll to wait to see where the draw will take them and what the financial implications are before deciding whether to take part.
Further complicating the issue is the state of limbo that this season's inaugural Champions League is in. Thailand's BEC Tero Sasana are through to the final, but the second leg of the second semi-final is in Sars-induced suspense, with Dalian Shide unable to host Al Ain of the United Arab Emirates. An autumn final is looking the most likely outcome, which means the next competition could start before the first has finished. Except that the AFC has also indicated it might change the format of the competition anyway, so that it runs entirely in a calendar year.
In such circumstances it seems almost irrelevant to mention that Happy Valley's Ailton De Araujo and Lee Wai-man and Sun Hei's Ricardo Rambo are all suspended for tonight's match after collecting their fifth yellow cards at the weekend.
