21
Sport and Recreation
GAMES
ASSOCIATION football has received much adverse publicity recently in almost all the leading soccer playing countries and Hong Kong has not escaped. At the present time the Council of the Hong Kong Football Association is investigating allegations of malprac- tices, but there has been a marked decline in attendances during the last two seasons, and the standard of play also appears to have suffered. Individual ability, however, remains high, and the past season saw victories against two leading South American teams which visited the Colony, the Peruvians and the Costa Ricans. Again, a promising young Chinese player named Cheung Chi-doy was invited to join the famous English First Division Lancashire club of Blackpool as a full-time professional in September, after a trial period as an amateur. So there are signs that the sport, which has a following second only to horse-racing, may soon regain its former status.
There was no slackening of interest in the affairs of the Royal Hong Kong Jockey Club, and despite a palatial new public stand there is still not enough space at Happy Valley to accommodate all those who are drawn to the sport of horse-racing. There was evidence of its ever increasing following in November when the Kwangtung Handicap-the first of three major events of the season --was run. The Jockey Club organizes cash sweeps on these three events, and this year's Kwangtung saw previous records broken when over three million tickets were sold and there was a first prize of $1,476,014.
A sport formerly enjoyed by a minority was placed within wider reach in April with the opening of the first two indoor public squash courts in Victoria Park. This is a Government-sponsored project under the Urban Services Department, but it is too early to judge its progress or the reactions of the Chinese members of