Chandigarh women team dropped from national football meet

In a disheartening development for the local football fraternity, the Chandigarh team will not participate in the 30th Senior Women’s National Football Championship for Rajmata Jijabai Trophy.

While the Chandigarh Football Association (CFA) officials claimed they could not find women footballers for the national meet, institutions having teams blamed the CFA for failing to host tournaments due which the players had to suffer.

The matches of the national tournament are scheduled at Amritsar (Group A and Group C teams); Haldwani, Uttarakhand (Group B); Nadia, West Bengal (Group D); Diphu, Assam (Group E); Narainpur, Chhattisgarh (Group F); Palakkad, Kerala (Group G) and Bhavnagar, Gujarat (Group H).

While at some venues matches have started, other venues will start hosting contests from September 9. The Chandigarh team was supposed to play their matches in Haldwani and were expected to be placed in Group B along with hosts Delhi and Haryana. Only Group B has three teams, while other groups consist of four teams each.

“We have sent emails to all colleges, including Panjab University and schools, seeking participation in our state women’s meet, as we have to select senior women footballers for the national meet. However, no response was received,” said KP Singh, president, CFA.

He added, “We again requested colleges and schools to forward the names of players, who are interested in participating in women’s national, but again no response came. As the last date to confirm participation to AIFF was due, we had to inform the national body that Chandigarh team will not participate this year.”

While CFA claimed it did not find enough women players, coaches at some colleges, schools and clubs maintained that the association had never launched an initiative to host women’s tournaments.

“In last many years, the CFA didn’t conduct any senior league or major tournament for women, which could have got the players covered under UT Sports Department’s scholarships. From 300 schools, over dozens of colleges in Chandigarh and Panjab University, how’s it possible that CFA member units (clubs) only have men’s teams,” questioned a local coach, seeking anonymity.

Another coach added, “In the past, the CFA had fielded women players from other states in national events by managing their admissions in Chandigarh institutions. The association has recently announced to conduct a Baby League in the first week of November, but for only boys,” added the coach.

Last year, seven players from Haryana Alakapura — which is known as “mini-Brazil” of India — were part of the Chandigarh team for the tournament. The side lost four matches and played one draw to fetch one point from five outings. In their last outing, the side played a goalless draw against hosts Bengal and lost their earlier matches to Railways (0-3), Delhi (0-1), Punjab (0-2) and Tamil Nadu (0-2).