Date:01/01/2009 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2009/01/01/stories/2009010155702000.htm

Sport - Football

Tuticorin in last eight

TIRUCHI: Tuticorin squeezed into the quarterfinals of the State youth football championship, beating Cuddalore 6-5 via two sets of sudden death and tie-breaker after the teams were locked 1-1 at the end of regulation time, here on Wednesday.

Both the sides were strong in defence, but Cuddalore had clever midfielders, who fed their forwards with some precise passes. Yet its players missed some scoring chances initially. However, Sathish beat two defenders to put Cuddalore 1-0 up in the 35th minute.

Tuticorin began the second half aggressively and its players started creating scoring opportunities.

Shinesh came agonisingly close to levelling the scores on a couple of occasions but his shots went inches wide. The youngster succeeded finally when he cashed in on a Cuddalore’s rare defensive lapse in the last minute of regulation time. After tiebreaker failed to break the stalemate, the match was decided on sudden death.

Other results: First round: Krishnagiri 5 (Dhrubojyoti Choudhury 2, C.J. Shalen Francis 1, N. Venkatesh 1, G. Raj 1) bt Virudhunagar 0; Kanyakumari 6 (Michael Antony 2, Jose 2, C. Vino 1, R. Rajkumar 1) bt Karur 0.