• Congratulations to the boys in Hanoi for, by all accounts, putting on a top day at yesterday’s Big Day Out with a handball clinic and having the telecast of the AFL Dream Team match during the event! 
• The Saigon contingent do the community thing on 24 May when we are involved in a 35^th anniversary event for the establishment of diplomatic relations between Australia and Vietnam.

Vietnam Swans V Singapore Wombats, Hanoi 31 May

The Singapore Wombats are confirmed for 31 May in Hanoi. There are 18 of them making the tour and they have already booked their accommodation. That’s how serious they are!! By contrast, the Saigon boys who will come up to Hanoi… we are just sorting a team hotel now – but go ahead and book your own air ticket. Hanoi puts on a cracking show and this weekend will be no exception. Drinks for the two teams will be held on the Friday night and there will be a dinner after the match on the Saturday. Details are being confirmed as this email is being written.

It will be Singapore’s inaugural tour to Vietnam. Singapore wears the old South Melbourne jumper (which caused the massive clash with our Sydney Swans jumpers). The Vietnam Swans expect to unveil their new jumper, designed by www.blueinkasia.com, on that weekend.

We’ve already had major collateral damage with the weekend being shifted from 24 May – 31 May. Danny Armstrong and Scotty Stacey will not be able to make the rescheduled weekend. They’re locked into a triathlon weekend in Mui Ne with their respective families. Calamity. A further calamity is that the Saigon Rugby Club will probably have an international match on the same weekend which will make it difficult for some of our rugby/ footy players to leave Saigon.

The Asian Championships

The Champs will be held in Singapore on Saturday 5 September. It won’t be as cheap as what it was last year in Singapore. So, start watching the pennies now so you can blow the pounds in Singas. On the subject of pounding, that’s what Dave Kainey is doing to the pavement in Singapore as he looks for reasonably priced hotels for us. We hope to announce details of the Team Hotel for Singapore soon.

The Vibe around Vietnam’s footy grounds

The vibe is good. Very good if you’re counting the number of new footies in the country. Hanoi has 3 spankers. HCMC also has 3 spankers. It doesn’t get much better than that. In Hanoi, Willy is taking a lead role in firing up the training sessions and is doing a willy awesome job.

Yesterday in HCMC, we had 4 new recruits: Two of them, Chris and Nathan showcased some silky skills. Paul came out of retirement to kick the footy for the first time in yonks and Euan had his first ever kick of the Sherrin. Absolutely fantastic to see some new faces at training. Hopefully the four of them will become regulars.

Corporate Touch Tournament

Next weekend in Saigon, the rugby boys will be holding the Corporate Touch Tournament. If anyone would like to play in it, let me know and we’ll organize to have you put in a team. It would be good if we had some players who wanted to play in the Touch.

Missing the Footy Tips wrap on the Swans Blog?

The Tip Star, Muzza, went AWOL recently with his updates on the tipping. He emailed today to say that he hoped to resume doing what he isn’t paid to do – tonight or tomorrow. We can’t wait for that one. Tune in to www.vietnamswans.com (which has now had 33,000 hits) to see for yourself whether there is any evidence of remorse for his performance – or lack thereof. It could be a belter of a report.

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The Bali Geckos last week advised the Vietnam Swans that they would not be able to make the tour to Saigon next wekend due to a lack of players.

The Vietnam Swans are well aware of the difficulty of having enough players for a tour (we had to postpone last year’s trip to Malaysia for the same reason). This was also the key driving factor for deciding to have a combined Vietnam team covering both Hanoi and Saigon.

By drawing upon players in both cities, we are more likely to get the required numbers for the tours that we commit to. And if Vietnam is touring, other teams from the region are more likely to tour to Vietnam. And then, it’s all good again.

Meanwhile, the Geckos have said that they hope to tour to Vietnam next year in 2009.