Tanamera FC was started in 1990, by a group of misfits who really didn’t belong in any other team. The core of the team, which started many years ago, included Saladin, Adam, Alfie, Ozi, Redza and myself, and it was really a spin off from our motorcycle group called the MADDOGS. We started arranging friendlies on school fields, since we were in school those days anyway. During the mid nineties we all left KL to further our studies abroad and as fate had it Adam, Jason and Redza and me, found ourselves in the “Land of Football” studying for various degrees, and there we formed Westside FC, as all the players lived on the west side of London. We stayed there for several years, and played every weekend, Regents Park being our home ground, and we also had away games all over England, on every kind of pitch imaginable, on slopes, up hill, big, small, and some games were played with pitches marked out by bags. Some days we would all gather at our home ground and send Adam and Redza out, to look for a match. The words ‘dya wanna game yeah?’ were heard on many a Sunday afternoon on Regents Park, while gesturing towards a bunch of Malaysian students huddled together. Well the Westside chapter ended when we all came back from our “studying”, and it culminated in one of the most memorable new years parties…. ‘New Years with the Westside’

After coming back to KL in ’97, we proceeded to build our current team, ‘TANAMERA FC’. With the help of Adam and Redza we scouted KL for potential players and managed to get a motley crew together and proceeded to play. At that time we played every Wednesdays nights at FAS. That’s when we met Manvir, Raymond and the other core members of the team as we know it today. In the meantime I had a vision and the words ‘if you build it they will come’ were ringing though my head and I set out to build a football pitch on a polo field that belonged to my family. From one pitch I increased it to four full sized football pitches much like the ones I had seen on my travels abroad, the most notable one being the grounds at Walthamstow in the north of London.

So here we are today with a pool of about forty players and our home pitch at Tanamera Football Grounds, Sg Buloh a decade later. We have had many people come in and out of the team including some of our childhood idols like Khan Hang Meng, Shebby Singh and Gunasekeran. Tanamera FC lives on because, and only because of the hundreds of players who have played, are playing and will play for the team in the future…

Omar Mazlan Harun