AMPANG, Jan 12 — At a modest press conference held at a nearly dilapidated house built in the 1950s in an old and quiet neighbourhood of Kuala Ampang, several members of the Ulu Klang Recreational Club (UKRC), mostly elderly, looked cheerful.
Today’s media conference would be the icing on the cake to cap a long legal battle fought to regain the right to care for their beloved football field, where memories of past games and tournaments are still told with child-like keenness, even as the last match played there would have been more than a decade ago.
Andrew Gopal, UKRC’s president for the last 22 years, eagerly broke the news about the negotiations that took place over the last few years with the Selangor state government.
The result was the reinstatement of UKRC’s right to manage the field, and the directive for the Ampang Jaya City Council (MPAJ) to vacate the land.
"I think it’s a big win for all the club members especially, who have poured so much into the club,” he told reporters here, sounding earnest.
After 23 years of battling developers and powerful politicians, UKRC has won the right to manage the football field and clubhouse again on February 9, 2022.
Today’s announcement was delayed by several months because of a pending appeal filed by the club members themselves, causing legal wrangles that needed the extensive cooperation of the state’s legal team to undo the filing.
That was finally resolved on October 14 last year after a Consent Order was obtained, the club said.
"Thereafter, MPAJ was given notice by UKRC lawyers to vacate the field on or before October 31 2022 and UKRC took charge of the field (again) on 1st November 2022,” it said in a statement.
But while winning back the right to manage the field itself may be a good enough cause for celebration, UKRC’s work is far from done.
Today’s announcement marks the start of a long journey towards rehabilitation, and likely a costly one.
The field, now overgrown with weeds and long grasses, will need to be tended to. The clubhouse, once a popular spot to host weddings and festivities, is in need of proper repair work.
Club members, who often invest their own money to maintain their beloved club, estimated the cost of refurbishment and repair could go up to anywhere between RM50,000 to RM70,000, and that is just a modest calculation.
Andrew and other members said they plan to hold football tournaments again in a bid to raise funds.
Before the late Tan Sri Khalid Ibrahim, then Selangor mentri besar, directed the pitch to be under MPAJ supervision, the pitch at the centre of the legal battle against developers and past state administrations became one of the club's biggest funding source, with steady revenue generated through rental for football matches and amateur tournaments.
MPAJ took over as regulators of the field in 2013, two years after the PKR-dominated state legislative assembly voted to amend the gazette by the previous Barisan Nasional government to sell the land to a private developer allegedly linked to a former member of the country's football governing body, the Football Association of Malaysia (FAM).
But the amendment only reinstated UKRC's control of the clubhouse and not the field — which would have been used to build a luxury condominium. Khalid decided in 2013 that the land would remain state land while maintaining its designation as a green lung, and to be managed by the MPAJ.
UKRC members claimed the field was poorly maintained by the local council, which slowly deterred people from using it.
Andrew said with UKRC now managing the field again, there is hope that sports enthusiasts, football fans especially, would be drawn back to play on the pitch.
