of-War and later migrated to Australia . Louis Yong was well-known , as the only Champion to win the Cup outright , being Champion in 1923 , 1924 and 1925 . John Then ( 1929 and 1930 ) was a very good athlete : he was Captain of the school Football team and eventually represented Singapore in the Malayan Cup Competition . Mr Eber recalls that Low Kee Pow ( 1938 ) joined Raffles College ( this was before there was any University ), then became a teacher at Raffles Institution and later one of the Inspectors of Schools : he also became a good golfer and was later Manager of the Island Golf Club . Mr Eber recalls Ernil Ryan ( 1937 ), who was formerly in the Police , Basil de Rosario ( 1938 ), formerly in the Public Works Department , Patrick Yee ( 1939 ), now managing his own printing firm , ArthurNunes ( 1949 ), wholaterwentto Australia , and Patrick Pestana , who taught at Raffles Institution , where he was in charge of Sports for a number of years . Douglas Nonis is now on the Singapore Recreation Club Committee . The Champion in 1947 and 1948 was Tan Eng Yoon , the distinguished Singapore athlete , who is now the Deputy Executive Director of the Singapore Sports Council and President of the Christian Brothers Old Boys ' Associa tion .
Tan Eng Yoon ' s school career at Raffles Institution was interrupted by World War II . He never competed in athletics at Raffles . After the war a chance encounter with a teacher at SJI ( Iulian Chan ) and a talk about Catholicism led him to enrol himself there in February 1947 . He began running again , and found he could overtake the school champion , quite easily , without training .
The English Schools Inter-School Championships were approaching . The competitors were allowed to take part in only two events and the Relay . Eng Yoon had won the 100yards and the 220yards . SJIhad won the 440 yards Relay , and the final result was in the balance . Whoever won the Mile Medley Relay ( 220 , 220 , 440 and 880 yards ) would win the Championship . Brother Charles , who was Sports Secretary at the time , told Eng Yoon :' Don ' t run the sprints ! Run the Half-Mile instead !'
Eng Yoon found that he was running agianst the established Singapore Schools Champion , Bala Subramanian . Bala was undefeated that year in the 880 yards and the Mile- no one in Singapore could touch him . The result of the championship depended on beating him . When Eng Yoon reached for the baton Bala was 150yards ahead of him . Eng Yoon recalls :
' I don ' t know how I did it , but I overtook him with about 220 yards to go , won the Relay for the School , and the Championship !' It was indeed a memorable meeting for the school , and in 1948 SJIwon the Championship again .
Subsequently , Eng Yoon taught for a while at SJI , and it was while he was a teacher that he ran the 100 yards in 10 seconds and the 220 yards in 23 seconds . And he was running on grass !
From then onwards he won Singapore and Malaysian titles , his forte being the Triple Jump . His record of 49 feet 7112inches was unbeaten in the Republic of Singapore for thirty-two years .
Eng Yoon went to the Asian Games in New Delhi in 1951 . He also took part in 1954and in 1956herepresented Singapore at the Olympic Games in Melbourne . In 1958he finished in eighth position in the Commonwealth Games in Cardiff .
In 1959the first South-east Asian Peninsula Games were held in Bangkok . Eng Yoon won the first event , which happened to be the 4OO-metreHurdles . Not only was his Gold Medal the first to be won in the first Games of this kind : it was also the first occasion that the Singapore National Anthem was played outside Singapore . It was composed in that very year . This made it specially memorable when he received his Gold .
The Sports Secretary in the late 1940s was Brother Charles , and the Brother who helped him with the training was a Portuguese Brother from Malacca , Brother Leonard Aloysius . Eng Yoon recalls :
' I remember we couldn ' t train at Stjoseph ' s because there was always a football game . I used to carry Brother Aloysius on my bicycle , with him sitting on the front- in those days , in 1948 , nobody worried - while I peddled down to Victoria School to train - Brother in his robe , me pedalling away ! In this way they used to train the school 440-yard Relay Team - Eng Yoon , Robert Cordeiro , Michael Chai ( recently Deputy Commissioner of Police ) and Arthur Nunes . In those days they could train three or four times a week . There were not the same pressures as today , and the team became the undisputed champions .
In those days competition in sport was based upon the House , as opposed to the Form , system . The House system at SJI started in 1929 . In 1958 the Houses were Ignatius ( colour orange ), Joseph ( red ), Marcian ( green ), Michael ( blue ) and Stephen ( yellow ).
Sport at SJI enjoyed a kind of Golden Age after World War IT . Among the foremost on the sporting field was Rudy Mosbergen , presently the Principal of Raffles Junior College . He was involved in quite a number of games . He played for the school in Soccer , Hockey , Cricket , Volleyball and Badminton , was in the Track team and put the shot . He didn ' t play Table Tennis or swim , and there was no Rugger at the school in those days . He says :
' I remember our HOckey , Soccer and Cricket teams were among the best , and we won quite a number of Inter-school Tournaments in those days . It was exciting stuff .
' In fact Ican tell you that in 1947and 1948 , when we played a Soccer game on St Ioseph ' s Field , there would easily be more than 2000 people watching those games . The standard was high . There was much interest then , particularly when we played against RI or Victoria - they were our traditional rivals . There was a school from [ chore called Johore English College - they were also keen rivals .
' Indeed , whenever Iwalk across the school field
60 Memories of Sf !