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Vietnam has graciously offered to host the “home” game of the Philippine national football team, as the local venues have not been deemed fit for the AFF Suzuki Cup semifinal against Indonesia. Interesting development in an episode that has been lacking in graciousness.

Homeless Azkals mired in politics on eve of semis

Flush from its best overseas showing in years, the Philippine football team didn’t use its first press conference back home to thank its fans for the sudden groundswell of support.

Instead, the players dissed their mother organization, the Philippine Football Federation. They complained about their lack of training facilities. They talked about being insulted. Then they denied that their “laundry list of grievances” was a laundry list of grievances. . .

Read the report on GMANews.

Thanks to brewhuh23 for the alert. brewhuh23 heads our campaign for Neil Etheridge to be a Jock With A Book.

Thanks to kumagcow for sending this in.

Congratulations to the Azkals Philippine national football team for making it to the semifinals of the Suzuki Cup! Woof! The region’s football underdogs drew with Myanmar to advance to the next stage.

(Another victory for the diaspora and my Theory of World Domination, megalomaniacal laughter.)

The way is shut. Neil Etheridge!

The Philippines will face Indonesia next. That semifinal should be played in Manila, where we can muster a home crowd for the Azkals; unfortunately the local football rep says we have no venues that meet Asean Football Federation standards so the match will be held in another country. Shame.

PHL 11 clinches semis spot in Suzuki Cup

Photo from the Filipino Football blog.

Philippines humbles defending champ Vietnam in Suzuki Cup

The Azkals will face Myanmar next on Wednesday while Vietnam and Singapore square off in a knockout encounter.

I won’t lie to you: it started with the shorts. As a tennis fan I am appalled by the length of the shorts on the ATP men’s tour. Why don’t they just wear white flannel trousers while they’re at it? Understand that I grew up in the McEnroe era, when Wimbledon finals were contested by men wearing hot pants.

The Rugby Chronicles part 1 in Emotional Weather Report, today in the Philippine Star.

For maximum appreciation, get hard copy. Buy ten copies of the Star now!

Thanks to my editors for the front-page announcement,

and the full-page treatment.

Watch out for the second part, which appears this week.

The last stop for the Philippine national men’s rugby sevens team before they returned to their jobs and regular lives was the Bahay Bata Orphanage in Angeles, Pampanga, where they had a training session with the kids from the Bahay Bata and Tuloy orphanages.

The Philippine Rugby Football Union provides sports training and assistance to these institutions; some of the kids are now members of the national under-20s rugby team.

Obvious question: What about the language barrier? The rugby players have limited Tagalog (though Andrews Farrar and Wolff and David Carman speak it fluently) and the kids have limited English. It didn’t matter at all.

The guys taught the kids the principles of the scrum,

the basics of tackling,

and put them through various drills.

“Heartwarming” doesn’t begin to describe it. The kids were thrilled, and the guys looked so happy. Maybe it was because they were only recently kids themselves, maybe it was knowing that these kids have nothing but are capable of such joy. It just puts everything into perspective.

With that, we close our exclusive coverage of the Borneo Sevens rugby tournament. I want to thank the PRFU, Coach Matt Cullen and physio Damian Raper for allowing me to join the trip and giving me total access, and Jaime Augusto Zobel for making it possible. Most of all I want to thank the Volcanoes for letting a total stranger in their midst and putting her completely at ease.

I’ve covered and travelled with scores of subjects, and I’ve never met a more generous bunch of people—they told their stories unfiltered, they hid nothing, they put it all out there. This kind of trust a writer can only dream of. Although the team did not get the result they were hoping for, they showed the rugby nations that the Philippines is the future of rugby.

Harry, Wolfie, Andrew, Andrew Evro, JC, Noel (and his lovely wife Lucy, my viewing and dining companion), Chris, DC, Mark, Ned, Patrice, Jonny (“I feel kind of dorky, but I actually got your Dune analogy”—He’s read Dune!), I’m proud to know you. As far as I’m concerned you’re 100 percent Filipino.

So I went to Borneo with a bunch of good-looking jocks, and I returned to Manila with twelve friends. It’s very bad journalism if you think about it, and I don’t care.

This exclusive coverage of the Philippine Volcanoes at the Borneo 7s was brought to you by JessicaRulestheUniverse.com and Globe Telecom.