Speaking on the Footy Show last week, Liberatore cited the fact that the Vietnam Swans “lost their last four matches of the season” (sic) (Editor’s note: clearly, the fact that Libber’s brain is tanking would be less evident if his lips stopped flapping. The Swans won our second last match of the year against the Lao Elephants). 

In a wide ranging interview, Libber accuses Coach Stacey of standing over Swans player, Mattie Greenwood, “demonstrating how to feign a medial ligament injury”.

The latest Libber outburst follows his comments last month that Swans President, Phil Johns is “a divisive figure who should be sacked and that Swans’ Captain, Gus McEwin should also get his marching orders if he could not guide the club to the finals at the 2008 Asian Champs”.

The Swans have obviously “issued a statement emphatically denying the claims and said they would hold a press conference about the issue on a Friday in 2020″.

To read the full story, see Micky J’s article, Tanking claims not confined to the mainland.

In what has been a bumper month for the Swans Blog, January had 3,279 hits which is a world record. Our previous best month was July last year when we had 3,271. What’s weird about that is that July was the month of the Asian Championships. January, by contrast, was the month of not very much!

In the last 20 days, 12 days have had more than 100 hits. If you include days that had more than 90 hits, the number goes up to 17. Seriously unheard of.

The Swans Blog has attracted an international audience. Staggeringly, the United States accounts for 28 per cent of our traffic; Australia has 22 per cent and Vietnam comes in at No. 3 with 19 per cent of the hits. Often, the Blog is difficult to access in Vietnam. Many times we can’t access it during the day at all which may explain why Vietnam doesn’t come in at No. 1.

If you have your own theory to explain these results, post a comment.

The proposed tour is likely to occur in late July which will be ideal preparation for the Asian Champs to be hosted in Singapore. The date for the Champs is still to be confirmed but it is expected to be held at the end of August after the Beijing Olympics.

Above is a photo of the Singapore Wombats. As you can see, their jumper is almost identical to the Vietnam Swans. The similarity of the two jumpers has been described by some Swans as ”untenable”. Given the Swans are the relatively new entrants on the Asian circuit, we are the ones who need the ”new look”.

2007 was a big year for the Swannies. Below are some of the highlights:

• - It was the year that Hanoi and Saigon combined to form a national team, the Vietnam Swans.
• - The Vietnam Swans then made our inaugural appearance at the Asian Championships in Bangkok in July.
• - Players and officials for our first Asian Champs came from no fewer than 6 countries (Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, China, Singapore and Australia) to make it happen.
• Triple Brownlow Medalist, Bobby Skilton; Triple Premiership Player, Clarke Keating; and member of the SouthMelbourne/Sydney Swans’ Team of the Century, Tony Morwood, individually wrote to the Vietnam Swans in the lead up to the Champs to wish us luck.
• We commenced a relationship with Sponsor, Jim Beam where they actively used the Swans appearance at the Champs to market their product – ie, they sought genuine business value from the sponsorship (eg Jim Beam promotional posters  that incorporated into the design the Swans appearance at the Champs.)
• In the lead up to the Champs, we launched the Vietnam Swans Blog which has since had more than 17,000 hits.
• The guys from Laos who played with us at the Champs – have since gone on to form their own Club, the Laos Elephants.
• We hosted a Tri Nations Tournament in Hanoi with Laos and Thailand that was combined with the netball. Approximately 200 people attended the after match function.
• We hosted a match in Saigon against Asian Champs Premiers’ the Hong Kong Dragons.
• We hosted a derby between Hanoi and Saigon in Saigon.
• We formed part of Austrade’s Australian Schools Open Day in both Saigon and Hanoi where we used footy to help differentiate the Australian education product. Club Sponsor, QBE Insurance, sponsored 900 Swans hats that were given away to attendees in the two cities.
• The Vietnam Swans received very generous support from sponsors for their third Grand Final Party in Hanoi and close to 200 people attended.
• In the lead up to the Grand Final, Vietnam Swans stalwart, Wayne Tinlin, was interviewed by ABC Radio in Australia.
• The Vietnam Swans ran the 2nd Grand Final Cyclo Parade in Hanoi on the Thursday prior to the Grand Final. A photograph subsequently appeared in Melbourne’s Herald Sun Newspaper and ABC Radio in Adelaide did a live interview with Wayne Bubbles Tinlin.
• The Swans continued to give back to the community by raising money for an organisation dealing with prostate cancer in Hanoi and also for the Loreto Foundation in Saigon which deals with disadvantaged children. On both occasions we raffled off Jim Beam bottles which were part of the original sponsorship from the Asian Champs.
• The Swans also gave sporting equipment to the orphanage in Hanoi that we have been associated with.
• The Swans held our 3^rd Annual Golf Day in Melbourne on 29 December.

 In many respects, 2007 has been a remarkable year for the Vietnam Swans. Congratulations to all involved – especially those involved with the Asian Champs. 

We are now extremely well positioned to have a very strong 2008. For a sneak preview of 2008, tune in to the blog tomorrow – the 1st Day of the New Year.

Yesterday, the Thailand Tiger’s President, Rhino offered Bangkok again as a venue for consideration as currently, no other venue has been locked in. If it is held in Bangkok, it would have to be held on 16 August (already, that is the only available date to book the Patana Grounds).

It must be said that the Tigers did an absolutley outstanding job this year.

In an earlier email, the Philippines believe that the Champs should be moved around the region “to showcase the game to the local community”. This is particularly important to the Philippines whose “main goal is to develop a proper league comprising of juniors and schools and just to be able to show every 5 to 10 years a major Aussie Rules event would no doubt be a massive help to any team”. Another option would be to formailise an Asian League with a North and a South Division; the top 3 of each division play off in Bangkok.

The Bali Geckos favour a permanent home which would also help raise sponsorship.

The Bintangs prefer a rotating system. It is a revenue generator for the host team. They can attract extra sponsors and give existing sponsors additional exposure. It’s also an opportunity to showcase footy to the locals which in turn, becomes a showcase to the AFL.

Singapore has said that they have two suitable ovals and they would be “more than happy” to host. Having said that, Bangkok is an exceptional venue with it being extremely accessible for all teams. However, it’s unfair to expect the Tigers to carry teh full burden of organisation each year. Perhaps a professional events management company could play a major role?

Well, that’s a snippet from around the region about where the Champs should be hosted next year.

What do you think? Post a comment. 

Surely, in some culture it must be lucky to announce 7,000 on your 200th? If there is, the Swans will give them an honourary membership.

In other statistics, it’s just 3 days more than 100 since we launched the Blog on 7 May with the story, “2 months and 10 days before Asian Champs”. Speaking of 10 days, it took just that many after the Champs for the Blog to record our 5,000th hit on 24 July. Coincidentally, 24 was the number of days it took us to collect the 2,000 hits needed to reach 7,000.

Conspiracy theorists momentarily suggested something more sinister than the above being just a random collection of unrelated coincidences. The Swans Blog considered their suggestions to be nothing more than malicious gossip – so we burnt them at the stake.

But back to the Blog’s stats: Vietnam accounts for 43.15% of the traffic (compared with 46.5% at 5,000 hits), Australia 30.85% (30.2%) and the US 6.83% (6.5%). The total number of countries that have logged on to the site has increased from 48 to 58 countries.

In other Swans Blog related news, Marty Hartigan, who lives in Melbourne, will be in Hanoi on the day of the AFL Grand Final. He got onto the net, found the Blog and emailed us requesting a couple of seats at the Vietnam Swans 2007 AFL Grand Final Party. For sure, Marty!!

Marty also mentioned that The Age ran an article a couple of weeks ago that included a reference to the Vietnam Swans.

It’s official: you don’t have to wait ’til the end of the day to discover that it’s all good. Hearin’ me?

Game 1:  Vietnam Swans Vs China Reds – Everyone arrived at the bus pick-up:  Good start.

Final score did not reflect the close nature of the game, but they knew how to kick sausage rolls and we could only muster behinds.

Final Score: China Reds 4.2 (26) –  Vietnam 0.3 (3)