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| Vietnam Swans play Thailand Tigers at Saturday’s Indochina Cup in HCMC. The Swans, who took the Cup, won all their matches against Thailand, Laos and Cambodia. - Photo: Adam Martin |
The Swans were joined at an over 200 strong party at La Cantine Restaurant in Dong Khoi St, District 1 by Aussie football players from fellow Indochina Cup teams, the Laos Elephants, Thailand Tigers and Cambodian Cobras, plus the Swan’s sister team, the Saigon Shooters, who also won a same-day netball IndochinaCup, and women’s netball teams from Hanoi and Thailand.
At the after-match function Vietnam Swan’s captain, Luke Creamer, said the Australian football Indochina Cup win was, “Epic.”
It was a very hard-fought-for win with several injuries early in the day including a broken jaw, a concussion and a badly split lip.
Before the game started Australian Consul General in HCMC, Graeme Swift, held a minute’s silence for the hundreds of Cambodians, who died in last week’s bridge tragedy in Phnom Penh.
The four Australian football teams played a round robin tournament with six 30-minute games played in total at the fields at RMIT in District 7.
“Not only the Indochina Cup, this is our first-ever tournament win. We’ve won a lot of individual games but never a tournament before,” Danny Armstrong, the Vietnam Swan’s national treasurer said.
Armstrong, who played his last game on Saturday, deciding to retire from playing after more than 30 years of footy, said winning the Cup was a terrific feeling.
“It was time for me to hang up the boots, whether we won or lost, so I asked the boys for a special effort to come up with a win. Couldn’t ask for more.”
Swan’s player, Matt Natalotto, who got his jaw, eyesocket and cheek bone broken in the first 10 seconds of the Swan’s first game against the Cambodian Cobras and had to get airlifted to Bangkok for surgery said from his hospital bed in Thailand on Sunday, “Great win for the Swans who definitely deserved it. So much hard work has gone into the team this year… and years past.”
Natalotto had also planned to hang up his boots after the Indochina Cup, but said that he couldn’t finish off a footy career like that, so he would continue to play at least until the ANZAC match next year once the injuries were healed.
Saul Morgan, captain of the Thailand Tigers, said the Indochina cup was one of the highlights of the Asian Football calendar. Morgan said the Vietnam Swans had organized the cup really well and he looked forward to next year’s Cup being held in Laos.
