Date:23/11/2008 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2008/11/23/stories/2008112360471600.htm

Sport - Football

CFA senior division league all set for kick off

Special Correspondent

Indian Bank is banking on junior players
Entry to the stadium is free this time

CHENNAI: Twice re-scheduled the Chennai Football Association’s senior division league is set to start on Sunday, subject to weather conditions. The wet spell punctuated with some heavy showers has left the Nehru stadium turf in bad shape.

“Any further rain,” feels the Stadium Officer Durai Singh, could make things difficult. Anyway, he said the decision had to come from the CFA since the ground had been allotted to them for the conduct of the 66-match league.

“Somehow we have to play,” felt CFA Secretary E. Sugumaran, for he knows, as do other football fans, the season has been long delayed.

If the April 14 start, coinciding with the Tamil New Year, as it used to be is the perfect time for the league considering the easy availability of the stadium, then an early October start, as it was thereafter, was still acceptable.

Be that as it may, the league has to be conducted and it is not just the 12 teams that are excited but the CFA officials themselves, because for the first time a title-sponsor has been found in St. Joseph’s Engineering College.

Besides most teams are keen on action, for, they have departed from the normal practice of depending on local or neighbourhood talents and gone for outstation players, even foreigners.

Madras Sporting Union in fact has signed as many as seven from Mizoram aside from Riju (Kerala) and a Nigerian, whose international transfer though is still to be cleared.

Teams like Arrows, Netaji and Annai Youth (promoted) all have African players to bolster their strength while holder Indian Bank is banking on junior players from various parts of the country but mostly Manipur.

Surprise packet

Among other teams Customs has picked one of Indian Bank’s star players last year (Ramesh) apart from some good talents from Kerala, while SBI, ever the surprise packet, has local talents mostly.

SBI’s mentor C.M. Ranjit feels his team which finished runner-up in an all-India tournament in Gwalior can deliver.

Runner-up ICF, as usual, is ready as ‘consistent performer’ without showing major changes in its line-up. AG’s, SAI, TN Special Police and S. Railway (promoted) are the others in the field. TNSP and SAI will set the ball rolling.

The first division league will also begin on Sunday. Entry to the stadium is free this time.