Swannies’ Co Captain, Billy Crang, spends 5 Minutes with the Flyer.

Dave Kainey is the Flyer. And yesterday, spending 5 Minutes with the Flyer was former Skipper, Luke “Dukesy” Creamer.

This morning, on the eve of the 14th Annual Asian Championships in Thailand, Swannies Co Captain, Billy Crang, spends 5 Minutes with the Flyer...

Flyer here mate, hoping you can spend a few minutes on these questions for the segment, 5 Minutes with the Flyer.

Billy Crang – No worries Flyer. Happy to chat any time.

Q1. Billy, with a load of talent leaving the Vietnam shores over the past year, geez there are some good footballers in that lot too, the Swannies needed someone to step up… something to happen regarding leadership. You stepped up. What was the motivation?

It wasn’t really any case of motivation; more an opportunity.  I’ve been here about four years and over that time I’ve been drawn deeper and deeper into the Club. I’m happy to do what I can to try and give back some of the energy that I feel the Club has given me whilst I’ve been living in Vietnam.  It’s great to see the new guys coming in and finding the same attraction. Sure, we’ve lost a lot of guys but I feel that we’re still building an ever-stronger platform.

Q2. The recent ANZAC clash v the Jakarta Bintangs allowed me to see a side of you that I had not really witnessed before. That loss hurt you big time. I know that because I saw you and others sitting down beside the coach’s boxes feeling the hurt. What was going through your mind then?

We’d not lost an ANZAC Friendship Match before and, to be honest, I didn’t think we were about to with that squad. But in that case, I guess, it was more than the loss. We had so many legends playing for the last time in the ANZAC Squad (they’ll play with us again but never in ANZAC Squad unless they’re living back in Vietnam (Club rules stipulate that to be eligible to play for the Swannies in the ANZAC Match, the player must be a current resident of Vietnam. Former resident players can still play in the curtain raiser, the Legends Match)) and we have such great support down at the dog track that it was quite embarrassing to let them down.

We could have done better; we left a lot of opportunities on the field. I don’t think we’ve done that in the past and, perhaps, being on the winning side previously, made this time quite a shock. At the time there wasn’t much going through my mind; bit numb I think. But the next few weeks it became a bit of a motivating point to take the momentum we’ve been building to grow it into something even stronger.

Dave Kainey is the Flyer. Pictured left at the Swannies’ first Asian Champs back in 2007, Bangkok. Also, Phil Johns, Scott Stacey (first Prez of Saigon) and Michael “MJ” Johnston.

Fabbo’s world domination plan is finally being unfurled.  I’m all for it!

The Asian Champs are as big as it gets. I’ve been to three now and always felt like I could have done more if i was more prepared (I think everyone has) and I’ve felt like we’ve got a great chance to carry on the way we’ve been heading with a somewhat new look squad so a lot of us have some great chances to step up.  My weeks have been pretty regular, just a few extra running sessions, some personal training and a bit of Yoga to try not to get any injuries.  Definitely feel pretty good for it all at the moment so hopefully there’s some benefits on the field.  I don’t think we’re doing anything too elite but there’s a few little preparation things that we’ve not really thought about in the past that could make some really big differences as that long day wears on.

Q4. You probably know this question is coming. What are your expectations and, of course, the team’s expectations / goals for the Asian Championships? How is the mood among the playing group?

The mood is fantastic.  We have a strong and even squad across the field, all pumped to do as much as we can.  The draw is always tough and we’ve got an interesting day coming up for sure. Philippines will come out breathing fire after the recent Manilla Cup win and Singapore will remember last year and, as always, have so much depth. Then we’ve got a mystery game against Japan who we’ll have to study through the morning and then our old foes, the Cambodian Eagles who have had the wood on us lately.  No love lost in that one!  For sure we feel that it takes a minimum of three wins to play semis. Our challenge is to do that at a minimum and if we’re lucky enough to do that, we’d love to really put in a good final as we’ve not had the legs to do that in the past two years.

Q5. In Hanoi, fellow co Captain, SOS is leading a fewer amount of Swannies that will tour – just awesome the Swannies are represented by both cities, especially for me having been a President of the original Hanoi Swans – have captaining plans been  shared? Are they secret? Will the players understand them? Will Fabbo have a say? Seriously it must be great to share the duties with SOS?

The Hanoian brotherhood is one of the best things about the Swannies. It brings a whole other element to our tours and let’s us play with some great players and blokes we don’t see every weekend at the Spotted Cow. This year, there seems to be some new guns coming through to replace Ado and C-Dan (injury, not dead to us!).

SOS has played through about the same period as me and is by far one of the best Clubmen you could ever imagine on and off the field. Sharing the captaincy with a guy like that brings even more prestige to it and is a great comforting factor.  We’ve definitely been sharing info in the lead up and they’re completely secret for now. At this level there’s no doubt less is more so we’ll keep it focused on the simple stuff and that should help all the guys know exactly where we’re all heading. Now that Fabbo is jetting around Asia we’ve deliberately kept him out of all strategy decisions.  We’ll let him know what’s going on about two minutes before he heads onto the field on Saturday.

Thanks Flyer. I can’t wait to have a beer after a few wins on Saturday!