A walk down the goal lane

I am proud to say that the reason for me to start my blog is football. The blog may look shabby but I don’t care.

Football has given me something which I don’t think I will ever get. And footer@ IIT M is something that will remain with me forever. I am indebted to my teammates for this.

Having experienced one of the happiest moments in my life on dec 19, 2006 when we beat iit kgp in inter iit finals, I cried out of happiness for the first time. How we won the finals is another long story and probably deserves a place better than my blog.

In my first year, I was thrilled to be a part of the insti team. A team that was said to be greater than any team that IIT M had had before. I missed inter iit 2003 due to injuries. We won silver in an unfortunate loss in the finals in penalties. The team had one of the best strikers I have seen in my four years – Francis. The guy was just amazing; he scored some 6 goals in 4 matches in inter iit.

One year later, I remember having experienced one of the saddest days of my life when we got knocked out of inter iit 2004. Everything was going fine after our first two matches. And then we suddenly lost to IIT K and we were out! The journey back home was so painful. I remember the match we lost. With 1-0 down, I was fouled by the Kanpur goalie and we were awarded the penalty. A draw would see us through to the semis. But it was not to be. Krishna hit it wide, we lost! I don’t blame Krishna for the loss. That one penalty wasn’t the whole game. I sometimes blamed myself for the whole fiasco; for being the striker that didn’t score, for being the striker which didn’t perform, for being the striker that got tired sometimes. That year I had to make a big choice between my brothers wedding and inter iit. I finally chose both! Took a flight to Chennai the day after my brothers wedding. Ill do anything for football!

I was named captain in april ’05 for inter iit 2005. I looked back at the two previous captains I had played under- Cup and Jimmy. I wasn’t as good as them I told Jimmy and that Ill screw it up. He told me to stick to the captaincy. I packed my Shaastra coordship for the captaincy then.

People were saying that IIT M had seen its good days of football and with the new set of inexperienced players it would be probably another 15 years before we could see some good stuff.
Good practice, fight and the belief that we can win saw us through and WE WON GOLD! IIT M won gold in footer after 15 years! Dec 18, 2005 was (along with dec19, 2006) one of the happiest days of my life. IIT M was done with its quota of bad luck. We had won semis on penalties and won the finals holding on to a 1-0 lead ( A lead which we had squandered in inter iit 2003). YES!!! We had done it!!

Football at IITM started its success journey in August 2005. After Inter-IIT 2005 the best was yet to come! Against Satyabhama college in sportsfest-06 we won 2-1 from a goal down and won silver. It was one of the greatest fights from our team. And this wasn’t all. Inter IIT was just amazing. My best in four years. Our captain Bobo got a fractured arm in the first match, our midfielders came down with fever, our striker Raj got injured, I had zero match fitness as I was down with fever in main camp and what not. Who would have thought that we’ll win? But we did! Because we the champions my friend; and we keep on fighting till the end. We beat kgp with 10 men holding them for 40 minutes; add to that the fact that five senior players were on the bench due to injury or sickness; and we won 3-1 in penalties. We played for Arun, who couldn’t join us; we played for footer @ IIT; we played like we were the champions! We had dreamt a dream and that dream had come true! We cried on the field like children. With my useless footer career behind me now, I am happy to have played with the best team I could have.