The HKFC Standard Chartered Soccer Sevens will again have a distinct local flavour as Ampcontrol Discovery Bay looks to make an impact at this year’s event. Mervyn Black reports
Managed this year by local residents Tim Bredbury and Mike Collier, who runs the Discovery Bay Football Club over- 45s team, Ampcontrol Discovery Bay will take par t in the masters section of the HKFC Standard Chartered Soccer Sevens next month and will look to continue a strong run that included a tournament victor y in 2018 and Plate success 12 months ago.
“Looking at the potential players we’ve got – if we get them all in – I think this will be our strongest team,” says Tim, who represented Hong Kong at international level as a player and has had a long managerial career in the city. “In terms of the quality of the players overall, I think it will be our strongest.”
Ampcontrol DB is expected to be one of eight teams in this year’s masters tournament, while the Soccer Sevens also features a women’s competition and a main men’s draw boasting teams from English Premier League clubs Aston Villa, West Ham United, Leicester City and Brighton & Hove Albion. The tournament has been running in its current format since 1999 and will take place from May 16 to 18 at Hong Kong Football Club.
In the masters draw, where teams can have five players aged from 35 to 40 with the rest over 40, the top four after the minor round will battle it out for the Cup, while the bottom four will lock horns for the Plate. Squads are made up of 12 players, with seven in action at any one time on a playing field a touch smaller than a traditional 11-a-side pitch.
It’s an event that holds a place close to Tim’s heart after decades of involvement and plenty of success for teams like the Waikiki Wanderers and the Liverpool Legends, alongside superstar names like John Barnes, Alan Kennedy, David Fairclough, Paul Walsh, Gary Gillespie, Bob Bolder and John Wark.
“It ’s been a great experience for me playing in the tournament with and against some of the legends of the game,” he says. “It ’s a great tournament and it ’s got a lot of potential to grow.”
While Tim, a DB resident of almost 40 years, is acutely aware of the importance of being competitive, the tournament is about far more than just winning and losing. “It’s just fun. It’s the best Sevens tournament in Asia and you get to play against some of the best players,” he says. “It’s also got a great community feel. The football scene in DB is pretty strong, especially up at DBIS of an evening. Every night of the week there is a football game of some description going on, plus there is Sunday morning football.”
While the team will feature a string of DB residents, the sponsors are also a major par t of Ampcontrol DB’s fabric and boast strong local connections through Lippmann Lee (Ampcontrol), Ben and Bonnie Chan (CTC), Matija Maretic (Marvelsoft), Tim Drew (Tanner De Wit t) and Craig Barnet t (The Chippy). Kit sponsor Kelme is part of the family through the team’s strong connection with Hong Kong Premier League powerhouse Kitchee.
Sponsorship is crucial to ensuring Ampcontrol DB can compete in a tournament expected to feature teams from the likes of hosts Hong Kong Football Club and Singapore Football Club, with Tim assembling a well-curated mix of local talent and big-name recruits.
Oli Rendall and Nick Light are among the DB residents who will be lining up for the team’s first game on May 16, while Tim will also field a host of players who used to strut their stuff for Kitchee. Also suiting up for DB is former resident Michael Campion, who represented Hong Kong at junior level and was a regular fixture in the HKPL in the 2010s.
While Michael is now based in Singapore, it’s his strong connection to DB and its people that are drawing him back. “DB, for our family, feels like home,” he says. “We know every single inch of it so intimately, and my mum and dad are still there. So it’s nice to come back, meet up with some mates and represent.”
It’s also something of a football homecoming for Michael, who has known Tim for decades and is also itching to line up alongside a couple of longtime friends in a tournament he holds dear. “I watched the first Soccer Sevens as a 15-year-old and I played in the second-ever edition in 2000 for the Yau Yee League Select, against the likes of the Arsenal and Chelsea youth teams. That was an awesome experience.
“For me personally with Tim, our relationship goes back a long time,” Michael adds. “He was one of my first-ever football coaches. I never actually got to play for Tim during my professional career – we were always at different teams – but we played together on Thursday nights [at DBIS]. It will be nice to play in a proper tournament with him and for him.
“I guess the final stroke is a lot of the guys on the team are ex-international teammates of mine. The two Hong Kong superstars, Lo Kwan-yee and Lam Ka-wai – we played together as 15- and 16-year-olds, which is pretty cool. We represented the Hong Kong national team and to play with them 25 years later at the age of 40 is pretty cool as well.”