Indian football: Western Railways win game that sees 4 penalties

Western Railway eked out a 3-2 win against Indian Navy in an Elite Division playoff match, of the MDFA (Mumbai District Football Association) League, at the Cooperage ground, here on Wednesday.

The Railwaymen opened the scoring through Ravikant Naidu after Navy conceded a penalty in the 18th minute. Their joy, however lasted for only 19 minutes as they gave away a penalty and Sunil Kumar slotted it home. The rest of the half saw some end to end action, but scored remained the same going into the break.

The first minute of the second half saw Navy concede another penalty for a foul by goalkeeper Bhaskaar Roy, who was shown a red card for the same. But Naidu failed to repeat his earlier heroics from the spot and shot the ball wide. Despite the missed penalty, Western continued to pile pressure on the Navymen, and their efforts bore fruit in the 68th minute when a solo effort from Rueben D'souza gave Western the lead.

But Navy weren't going to give up so easily and they equalized seven minutes later through substitute Vikramjeet Singh's powerful half volley which flew into the roof of the net.

With four minutes of injury time completed, the game was headed for a draw when Navy's Suman Bose handled the ball in the penalty box and the referee had no choice but to award a penalty. Somi PT scored the resulting penalty for Western to edge out the men in blue.

Stopwatch: Western Railway 3 (R Naidu 18, R D'souza, Somi PT 90) bt Indian Navy 2 (S Naik Vikramjeet Singh]