‘…Singapore clean sweeps the whole Cyberfusion E-Sports league. That concludes a whitewash after football beating.’ tweeted Malaysian e-Sports fan Asyraf ‘TPK’ Fadzlee following a complete Singaporean victory at the FIFA 12 and StarCraft II tournament last weekend.
Top players from Singaporean gaming team Flash e-Sports made their way down to Cyberjaya in Kuala Lumpur on 26th and 27th November 2011 to participate in the first season of Cyberfusion E-Sports League (CeSL), an offline tournament organised by Spotgamers to promote e-Sports in Malaysia.
Marcus ‘Revenant’ Tan and Wen-Jun ‘hibidi’ Chiang placed first in the StarCraft II and FIFA 12 tournaments respectively.
Said Wen-Jun of their wins: “[I’m] very happy and proud that we managed to achieve something so difficult, since it’s widely accepted that there are more quality players in Malaysia compared to Singapore [for FIFA 12].”
He also said that this win meant that Malaysia would be more determined to get the better of Singapore the next time the countries meet in a competitive situation.
“This so-called ‘battle of the causeway’ means a lot to the people on either side of it, and there’s always that extra bit of motivation to win whenever there’s such a match-up.”
Indeed, the infamous, longstanding rivalry between Singapore and Malaysia is not one limited to the football pitch.
Just last year, teams from both countries fought it out for 3rd place in the Digital Youth Awards’ Heroes of Newerth worldwide invitational tournament. The match drew great response from all over the show floor, with many gamers coming over to support their teams.
In previous years, players from Singapore would also make their way over to Malaysia to participate in the latter’s World Cyber Games qualifiers. In one case, a Singaporean player nearly stole first place from Malaysia in their local Command & Conquer 3 qualifiers; that was after his championship win in the Singaporean C&C3 qualifiers too.
On the football pitch, Singapore will be pitting itself against Malaysian teams next year in the Malaysian Cup. Expect the rivalry to deepen further.
