Trident Corporate League

Trident Corporate League 
By Uddalak Banerjee (U52498)

This is a real life story which unfolded in the very premises of trident (during the Trident Corporate League held at Ludhiana towards the end of June). The name of my team was Spartans. The team had 7 members which were saurabh arora, Myself, vishesh arora, aakash chandak, Nivruti Susar,Mandeep Singh gill,KG suraksh. Our team had new joinees in me , aakash and the team was made not because we ever played together before but because we all wanted to participate and we were not getting teams to participate in. None in the team had ever played much football but yet all of us were excited at the opportunity.Our expectations can be summarized by the comment” Are yaar baki log bhi saare player to nahi hai , enjoy karne ke liye khelenge, aise bahot log honge jo hum jaise khelne ayenge  “.  Our first match was pitted against Guns and Roses ( the team which went on to win the League) . Before the match we all were excited and started training hard just before the match . None of us were players and had not touched football over last 3-4 years and there were some who never ever played the game and touched football for the first time during the game.We were making comments during practice “well played suraksh , match me bhi aise hi khelna, pakka jeetenge..etc”.

The game was hardly of 20 minutes having two halves of 10 minutes each. Owing to excessive practice just in the eve of the game , we lost breathe and conceded first 3 goals in space of first 4 minutes and thereafter we completely lost hope . By the end of second half we already  conceded 8 goals and in the end towards the end of 13 minutes (7 minutes before time) even the referee was saying ,”choro yaar aur kitne goal dooge…har gaye hai..khatam karte hai …”

From that point of loss and the shear ignominy of the defeat and the jeers of the crowd or empathy of being a loser ,the team began to fight among themselves accusing each other for the massive loss and loss of face in front of friends and team members who had come to see us win. Some were saying that they wont come back for the next game because it is of no use.Our next match was scheduled the very next day so there was no turnaround time. Towards the evening I mailed to my team stating in Caps “  WE CAN STILL WIN “. Thereafter I wrote that the team still has an outside chance to qualify if we can beat the remaining two teams. I said that we did not play overall in coordination and that we should never have all rushed towards the ball at one time since we don’t have that much of energy and practice to sustain the full 20 minutes . So we need to break the entire field into regions and we need to mark our own regions .If we wait and strengthen our defence we can still give a good fight. If we cant win atleast we can draw!.

The next match began and there were very few players turning up and we had just 5 players and no substitutes that day. The match was against center forwards(the team which qualified for last 4). But those who turned up like aakash , vishesh and KG suraksh were indeed motivated and so was I .We new we had to play 20 minutes full and we cant lose energy. The game started. No body expected anything of us after conceding record number of goals in the last match. But this time we sustained .None of the players left their mark. We did not conceded even a single goal in the entire match .Even the referee was shocked at half time when scores were 0-0 because we had made a reputation of conceding goals and  Centre forwards had won the last  match 2-0 and was sure to score.In the second half , the unbelievable happened. We scored!!! We won the match 1-0. The entire crowd was stunned. Call it TPM or call it Integrity or call it growth and development , for the entire 
match there was

not even a single proper shot on our goal . We closed down all angles and all through passes .