MARGAO
From June 2023 to September 2024 has been quite a journey on and off the hockey field for Bharat Gaonkar, the first-year student of Government College of Quepem. If changing four buses and travelling to-and-for from Gudi Paroda to Peddem Mapusa some 120 kilometers daily to attend practice session for 20 days was not enough, suffering the ignominy of watching your opponents steam roll over with ease and pump goals at will was adding up to the pain.
Bharat, is one of the many players to make his way to the Goans Hockey team from the sleepy village of Gudi Paroda to the state team. He has watched with helplessness in the last 15 months as his opponent players have pumped in 122 goals against his team in 11 matches from the period between June 2023 and September 2024.
For the records, Goans Hockey lost all the three league matches in the ongoing Hockey India Junior championship taking place in Punjab. The score line read 15-1 against Manipur, 11-1 with Himachal and yesterday Maharashtra pumped 17 goals against one that the Goans scored. That made it a 43-3 goal tally for the Goans, goals scored against them and goals conceded.
Goans have been the whipping boys of Indian hockey and opponents look forward to scoring the maximum number of goals against the Goans, so as to help their way with the goal difference, if by any chance that comes into play.
In fact, Bharat and three other players were part of the Goans Hockey team which took part in the Hockey India West Zone junior championship held in July this year at Rajnandgaon Chhattisgarh.
In the six-team group, Goa lost all their five matches, ended up retrieving the ball from the goal 47 times in five matches and scored six goals in the process.
Started with a 14-1 loss to Madhya Pradesh, followed by another big 13-0 loss to Maharashtra. The trend continued with a narrow 4-2 loss to Rajasthan, 11-0 defeat at the hands of Chandigarh and ended the campaign with a 5-3 loss to Gujarat.
Incidentally, the team went to the West Zone without a coach with Anjulo Fernandes, listed as doing the duties on the technical bench as manager.
At the ongoing championship in Punjab, it was a debut by fire for Sayed Kamabli, who recently completed his NIS course while Inacio Fernandes is the manager.
For the juniors, the goal pounding has been following them since June 2023 from Rourkela Odisha. At the Odisha National championship, Jharkhand made merry with a goal scoring festival netting 18 with no reply, next Hockey Unit of Tamil Nadu pumped nine without any reply from Goans Hockey and Le Puducherry also joined the goal feast at the cost of Goans with 5-2 drubbing.
The coach who had to watch helplessly from the bench was Sports Authority of Goa (SAG) coach Victor Agnelo Joseph Albuquerque, while Goans Hockey Executive member Carl Florence De Souza was the manager.
The junior boys’ team is not the only Goans Hockey team which have suffering humiliating defeats in the national championships and at the West Zone event, the juniors’ girls, Sub Juniors (boys and girls) and the senior team, both men and women have suffered the same fate at the hands of the opponents including the National Games 2023 held in Goa, where they imported outstation players yet they finished last in both the men’s and women section in their respective groups.
