Inter-school football: St Mary’s overcome Our Lady

'Well begun is half done’ is an axiom that may apply to sport but ‘it isn’t over till the fat lady sings’ seems to be the motto favoured by St Mary’s ICSE, Mazagaon, Under-14 team. The Division I side defeated Our Lady School, Dadar, in a tie-break in the second round of the Utpal Sanghvi Under-14 Boys’ knockout interschool tournament after trailing for almost the entire duration of the game at Azad Maidan on Tuesday.

The match ended 1-1 in regular time and the Mazagaon side earned their victory with a comprehensive 3-0 score in the shootout.

St Mary’s went down in the first half to a Suraj Makwana goal. They trailed the Dadar side by the narrowest of margins till the final few minutes of the game. The Mazagaon side showed great determination as they played with great intensity despite being unable to break down the gritty Our Lady defense.

St Mary’s reaped the reward of their had work with a couple of minutes remaining for the final whistle, when substitute winger Manan Shastri found himself with a one-on-one situation with the Our Lady goalkeeper and coolly finished to bring the score back to parity.

Our Lady players appeared to be disappointed at their late error and managed poor efforts in their penalty kicks. St Mary’s keeper’ Joshua Sinate saved the attempts from Baviehar Saniyo and Suraj Makwana, while John Velson shot off target. Anas Vadgama, Tanay Shah and Yash Chaudhary scored their penalties for St Mary’s to win the game and progress to the next round.

St Mary’s skipper Vadgama said, “We have a habit of conceding early goals and coming back, so we were not nervous. In all of our MSSA League games, we let in a goal and then came back to win the game. We had done it so many times that we were sure to score.”

The goal scorer Manan Shastri shared his captain’s opinion. “The opponents’ scoring first gives our team a boost and we start playing much better. I guess we need to go down one goal before we start playing well.” said Shastri.

St Mary’s were only able to make it to the quarterfinal of the MSSA Under-14 tournament but Vadgama expects them to do better in Utpal Sanghvi. “We have two teams in the League competition, but since this is a knockout tournament all the good players from the ‘B’ team have been included in our squad. With this team, we can go all the way.”

Results:
Boys’ U-14 USKO: St.Mary’s SSC (Mazagaon) (2) (Anas Sayed 1, Aamir Sakriwala 1) bt G.D.Somani (Cuffe Parade) (0); The Cathedral & John Connon (Fort) (1) (Sidhant Chadha 1) bt The New Era (Grant Road) (0); Christ Church (Byculla) (1) (Rayyan Shaikh 1) bt St.Joseph’s (Wadala) (0); St. Pius X .(Mulund) (6) (Tristian Fernanades 2, Crispian Dias 1, Tanmay Keluskar1, Aditya Riachura 1, Subhash Amin 1) bt Maulana Azad (Byculla). (0), St. Xavier’s (Fort) (5) (Devesh Poojari 3, Harsh Gosiya 1, Thomas Alphonso 1) bt Activity HS. (Peddar Road) (0); Campion School (Cooperage Road) (8) (Raghav Goyal 2, Shlok Jain 2, Pranamya Joshi 1, Vir Sekseria 1, Shashank Aggrawal 1, Abhishek Aggrawal 1) bt St.Teresa’s (Charni Road) (0); St. Mary’s ICSE (Mazagaon) (4) (Anas Vadgama 1, Aayush Shah 1, Tanay Shah 1,Yash Chaudhary 1) bt Our Lady Sch (Dadar) (1) (Anand Gabrial 1).
MSSA Boys’ U-16 Division IV-U St. Gregorios (Chembur) (2) (Abhijeet Shetty 2) bt St. Joseph’s (Vikhroli) (0)