Early bird takes the trophy - Easy win at TTIS inter-school football finals

BALL IN MY COURT: Action during the All Bengal Finals of Dabur Red Paste presents TTIS Shootout ’11 at Harish Park. Picture by Anindya Shankar Ray

It began pouring but the game continued at Harish Park on August 25. The event was the All Bengal Finals of the Dabur Red Paste presents TTIS Shootout ’11 inter-school five-a-side football tournament. The finalists, Nirmal Hriday Ashram of Midnapore and North Point Day School of Calcutta, looked all set to fight to the finish for top honours.

North Point took an early lead, scoring in the first three minutes. This bolstered their confidence, after which there was no stopping the boys in violet. They foiled all attempts by Nirmal Hriday to break even and went on to score twice more. The final score read 3-0.

“Our strategy was to score as fast as possible. That helps build pressure on the opponents, as it happened today,” said Bhaskar Das, the winning captain.

Winners of North 24-Parganas, Howrah and two teams of Calcutta battled it out in the knockout stage. On August 24 and 25, six winning teams from the districts and two teams from the Calcutta leg fought it out in the knockout, from where the top two teams faced off in the finals.

The best moment for the winners was when they were handed the trophy by former footballer Subrata Bhattacharya amidst a shower of confetti and cheers.

Bhattacharya said: “Today, I spotted some talented boys who could turn out to be good footballers.” The onus, he said, was also with the schools to encourage and nurture such talent.

In the junior category, the first prize went to KE Carmel School and the second to St Sebastian’s School. The man of the tournament was Nihal Ahmed of North Point Day School. Bhaskar Das was the top scorer and Pinku Das of Krishnagar AV School was declared the best goalkeeper.

The tournament is treated as a platform for budding footballers.

“We could not win today, but reaching the finals is also a tough job, as you have to beat a number of teams. Today, the opponents played better than us,” said Rakesh Singh, the captain of the Nirmal Hriday team.