THE running joke circulating around journalists covering the upcoming Asian Youth Games is that organisers should stage a 'Flu Cup Final', contested by the Philippines and Hong Kong football teams.

No one was laughing earlier this week, of course, when five footballers from the two sides came down with H1N1, forcing the rest of their teammates into a week-long quarantine in Singapore.

Organisers were grim-faced, as they grappled with questions on whether the Games should continue, now that Influenza A has reared its ugly head in the Games Village.

But there were plenty of smiles and high-fives when the Filipino teenagers were released from Aloha Loyang Resorts on Friday morning. Their peers from Hong Kong will be equally ecstatic on Saturday morning, when they too, get the all-clear from the Health Ministry.

The end of their quarantine period, while eventful in itself, is also a chance for the Games to switch to what it should really be about: Sports.

When the idea of a continental-wide Youth Games was first mooted in 2007 as part of Singapore's bid for the Youth Olympics, many assumed that the AYG would simply be a testbed for the more glamorous and widely-anticipated YOG.

But the nine-sport AYG stands firmly on its own two feet, not least because it will give Asia's brightest sporting talents a platform on which they could excel and improve.

Add the fact that it is the Republic's first multi-sport extravaganza since the 1993 South-east Asian Games and you get an idea of just how important the AYG is in the context of Singapore sports.

Come Sunday, the torch will be lit and the real action will get underway just 48 hours later.

Realistically, of course, the shadow cast by H1N1 will continue to hover over the Games, especially with hundreds more athletes arriving in the next few days from far-flung corners of the continent.

But Asia's eyes are on us, and national pride is at stake. Couple with our famed pragmatism and resourcefulness, there's a good chance Singapore can pull off the Games, H1N1 or not.

And that, surely, is nothing to sneeze at.