When the tiger and lion wore the same shirt

Tokyo, October 1964. The Malaysian contingent marched into the Olympic stadium behind the flag of a country that had existed for barely a year.

Among those athletes were competitors from Singapore, then a state of Malaysia, marching alongside men and women from Malaya, Sabah and Sarawak.

For the first and only time at the Olympics, tigers and lions competed together.

But the story of that sporting union had begun long before the opening ceremony in Tokyo.

Singapore and the peninsula had been sharing sporting fields for decades, and nowhere was that more evident than in football.

Players crossed the causeway regularly for the Malaya Cup. They knew one another, and competed against one another.

And in 1964, they found themselves in the same dressing room wearing the new Malaysian shirt.

Six Singaporeans were selected for the first official Malaysian side at the Merdeka Tournament: goalkeeper Wilfred Skinner, captain Lee Kong Seng, Majid Ariff, Lee Wah Chin and brothers Quah Kim Swee and Kim Siak.

The mood was buoyant when Malaysia opened the tournament at Stadium Merdeka on Aug 22, beating Thailand 3-0.

A 1-1 draw with India followed. Then came Burma.

Malaysia lost 3-0, and the optimism surrounding the new team quickly gave way to criticism.

South Vietnam compounded the disappointment with a 2-1 victory, leaving the hosts fighting merely to stay alive.

Malaysia recovered to beat Chinese Taipei 5-2, but the damage had been done. The new national side failed to reach the semi-finals.

Otto Westphal, the German coach who had succeeded Choo Seng Quee, came under heavy censure. His selections and tactics were questioned as a team containing considerable talent struggled to find its rhythm.

The irony was difficult to miss.

Many of the players had spent years competing alongside and against one another in the Malaya Cup, so the football connections were already there.

The new Malaysian identity was still finding its shape.

The disappointment revived the call for Choo, the Singapore-born coach who had guided Malaya to three successive Merdeka titles from 1958 to 1960.

Tunku Abdul Rahman, then prime minister and FA of Malaysia (FAM) president, wanted him back.

But Choo’s position was becoming increasingly complicated. He remained closely involved with the island’s football and was coaching Singapore in the Malaya Cup, which it won in both 1964 and 1965.

On Jan 30, 1965, Choo formally ended his association with FAM and moved towards a full-time role in Singapore.

Football, meanwhile, would not make it to Tokyo.

Malaysia lost its Olympic qualifying tie to Thailand 4-3 on aggregate, after a 1-1 draw in the first leg and a 2-3 defeat in Bangkok.

Hockey carried the shared colours to Japan instead.

The 1964 Tokyo Olympics remain the only Games at which Singapore athletes participated as part of Malaysia.

By then, the political union was already under strain.

Two months before the Olympics, racial riots had erupted in Singapore. There was concern that the tensions surrounding the young federation might follow the athletes to Japan.

They did not.

In Tokyo, the athletes found themselves representing a country that was still being defined, but the sporting purpose was clear.

Among them were four Singaporeans in the Malaysian hockey team: Douglas Nonis, second-choice goalkeeper Anwarul Haque, S Kanagalingam and Kartar Singh.

Nonis had already scored the winning goal for Malaysia against India in a test match in Melaka a month before the Olympics.

Then, in Tokyo, he scored again.

Malaysia were level with Canada at 1-1 when Nonis found the net in the 57th minute. Malaysia went on to win 3-1 and eventually finished joint ninth with Great Britain.

For captain Mike Doraisamy, the experience went beyond the result. He later remembered the opening ceremony as a moment of “true friendship”, with the Singaporean players wearing songkok and looking “very Malaysian”.

It was an extraordinary snapshot of a country still in its infancy, with athletes from different territories suddenly bound by the same sporting identity.

And for some of those who wore that shirt, the significance only grew with time.

M Karathu was just 21, a young Perak player in the Malaysian football squad at the 1964 Merdeka Tournament.

He had been given a place among players he had watched and admired, in a team that was still learning how to become a national side.

Karathu has often thought about what that young Malaysian team might have achieved had circumstances allowed it to grow together.

“It was a historic moment for all of us,” he said. “Playing alongside hugely talented players was a dream come true. I wish it had lasted longer.”

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