Early this week the famous Tottenham Hotspurs football club of the English Premier League announced an official club partnership with South China, one of the oldest soccer teams in Hong Kong - a team that has won more trophies than any other local club.

Under the partnership, the two clubs will share coaching methods and techniques and send coaches to visit each other.

That is not the only good news in local soccer circles lately. On October 21 when South China played host to Kuwait Sports Club in the second leg of this year's Asian Football Confederation (AFC) Cup semi-final, close to 40,000 fans packed the HK Stadium cheering for the home team. It was a scene that had not been witnessed for many years.

Over the past year, the idea of a Hong Kong Professional League (HKPL), a new framework supposed to improve on the organization of the local soccer league, was discussed and acted upon.

Although the HKPL finally failed to materialize in time for this season because some teams were not ready, we can see the enthusiasm and sincerity of sport organizers to restore, at least partially, the past glory of Hong Kong football, which not many today even know about.

The sport was introduced to the colony as soon as the British seized it from China in the middle of the 19th century. Organized tournaments started to appear at the turn of the century.

At first only the British and other European residents of the colony played the sport. The emergence in the early 20th century of Chinese players, who focused more on personal skills, gave the sport a new dimension.

These Hong Kong-Chinese players, some of them still studying in secondary school, represented China in the now-defunct Far East Games and bagged the soccer event title nine times in a row from the 1910s to 1930s.

The majority of the Chinese Olympic soccer team in 1936 and 1948 came from Hong Kong.

Before World War II, Hong Kong was the leader in the sport of football in this part of the world.

In the 1950s, Hong Kong players still were able to help Taiwan win gold medals twice in the soccer event at the Asian Games and clinch the title of the Malaysia-organized Merdeka Tournament in 1963.

Other Asian countries began to catch up after the end of World War II, but the popularity of local football remained high all through the decades.

It was not until the 1990s that local fans began to stay away from football matches. At present the attendance at most of local matches numbers only in the hundreds.

The HKPL is an attempt to introduce new elements into local football. Among other proposals, it tries to root football in the community by proposing to attach every team to a particular district.

However, reviving Hong Kong football cannot rely on a few enthusiastic businessmen alone. The SAR government should also play an active role.

One way is by providing sufficient facilities that are up to standard. At present, there are not enough soccer fields for every team in Division One to have its home stadium, for example. And some of the eight stadiums now being used as Division One play have unsatisfactory lighting and turf conditions, or are not conveniently located for spectators.

Thus more land should be allocated for building football fields and existing stadiums should be upgraded.

To help reform the local league, the authorities ought to assist the Hong Kong Football Association financially, to kickstart the HKPL if necessary. The Japan Football Association was given $20 million in 1993 to start the J League, which later became a huge success.

To match this, the SAR government must rethink its policy of concentrating its resources on sports that can win medals for the SAR. Rather, it should allocate more funding for sports that have a more general appeal.

Football has such an appeal, and the match between South China and Kuwait SC last month told us clearly that Hong Kong people's passion for local football is still there, only waiting to be rekindled.

(HK Edition 11/06/2009 page1)