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St Stephen’s hold UK boys in football tie
Our Sports Reporter
Chandigarh, March 8
The visiting Punjab Radio Sporting Club, Coventry, England, today played a goaless tie against St Stephen’s Club, Sector 45, in a football match at the St Stephen’s grounds.
Both teams played good football and it were the cheering fans who had a taste of the fine game played by the two teams. Last evening also, both teams had played a drawn match with scores being 1-1 in the tie held at Panjab University grounds. Before coming to the city, the visitors played a series of matches in Haryana and some parts of Punjab. Last year, St Stephen’s Academy boys had paid a visit to Coventry to play against the club teams in order to gain exposure. Today’s match was an exciting affair as forwards from both teams tried to put pressure on each other. Several moves were made but it were the goalkeepers of both sides who foiled any attempt to get it converted into a goal. Mr JS Dhami, a veteran soccer player and native of India who was the key person sponsoring the UK club team, said it was in 1960 when he moved to UK. He remained an ardent soccer player and formed a sporting club in 1963. He said since then, various agegroup teams in under 12,14, 16 and above 16 were being trained by experienced coaches. He said the basic idea to bring these Indian origin boys to their home country was to give a feeling of their country, have interaction with Indians and to gain exposure. He said apart from India, they had earlier visited Belgium, Germany and other European countries. He said it was Punjab Radio which sponsored the team for their tour to India. They will be playing another match on March 14 at Malerkotla. The teams that played were, Coventry Club: Pardeep, Hardip, Gurchetan Singh, Harpreet, Amarjit, Navjit, Steven, Kulwant, Anthony, Balwant Dehil, Navdip, Baljinder. St Stephen’s: Navjot, Kulwinder, Inderjit, Surinder, Sewa Singh, Harinder, Sunil, Baljinder, Kartik, Harpreet, Gopal, Amit, Aita Ram, Tejinder, Moj Nath, Sukhdip and Simon.
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