24 hours after TMSG exposed how the Football Association of Singapore (FAS) nominations for its own Story of the Year award was flawed and just two days after it announced the list of nominations for the annual award, the football body has apologised for its human error and have also revoked the nominations of two stories it had selected as the final set of nominations.
On 21 November at 7.29pm, the FAS Director of Communications Mustaffa Ehsan Sa’aid said in an email to media outlets that “due to a human mistake during the compilation process, an entry outside of the SPL scope was included and in addition, more than one submission from the same organisation was shortlisted for the final three.”
In the FAS’ own set of criteria which had been sent to media on 16 October, it had stated categorically that each media outlet was to only submit one story and that all stories were to only be about the Singapore Premier League.
The three shortlisted stories ahead of the 23 November awards ceremony were as follows:
Of the three, two were from Lion City Sailors, while the submission from CNA was a story about Danelle Tan, a Singapore woman footballer who had signed up with Borussia Dortmund, which had nothing to do with the Singapore Premier League.
The FAS also said in its note to the media about half hour before the Singapore and Thailand World Cup qualifier that “in the spirit of fairness to the other media who had abided by the original criteria specified, the decision has been made to retract the nomination for the submission by CNA (Broadcast) and to remove one of the two submissions made by Lion City Sailors.”
These two slots have now been replaced by two submissions that have been assessed and graded by the judging panel and the two media outlets to gain from the latest FAS cock-up are The Straits Times and ESPN Singapore.
The revised list of nominees for the Story of the Year award are now as follows:
1. “Football: From hugging the touchline to prowling it with a flag, ex-winger Oswind Suriya gets his second wind” (Deepanraj Ganesan, Straits Times)
2. “Yes, we work like women – and it’s been wildly effective” (Kenneth Tan, Lion City Sailors)
3. “World Cup Socceroo Bailey Wright far from done as he embarks on new voyage with Lion City Sailors” (Gabriel Tan, ESPN Singapore)
The FAS added that the error was “entirely unintentional and in no way reflects a lack of commitment to the guidelines of the 2023 FAS Awards Night”.
THERE ARE STILL QUESTION MARKS ABOUT THE PROCESS
However, what was also questionable was the process in which the Story of The Year award was administered.
The FAS, in its statement said that “the judging panel had submitted their respective tabulated scores for all of the submissions directly to the FAS and without any prior discussion with each other”.
So who in the FAS did the unwrapping and tabulation of the scores?
How many people were involved and was the General Secretary Yazeen Buhari aware of the entire process?
Were independent auditors hired to eyeball the entire process?
How have the FAS now reached the decision to add the two new nominees in the final shortlist?
Who would be aware of the final results ahead of the announcement?
The FAS’ Director of Communications Mustaffa did state in its email to the media that “I am taking steps to address the error and ensure that such oversights do not occur in future events” and that “I will be implementing enhanced quality control measures during the submission compilation process to safeguard against similar mistakes.”
No details were provided.
TMSG has said in our previous story about this matter that there needs to be a forensic audit of the FAS, which then needs to be made public, and we stand by our call.
MAIN PHOTO: FAS