Margao
The Goans Hockey Sub junior boys have a big task ahead of them in the Hockey India Sub-junior national championship in Chandigarh. They will have to turn the tide of losing by embarrassing margins.
Will they be able to turn the tables against the opponents remains to be seen.
For the records, Goans Hockey take on Dadra & Nagar Haveli And Daman & Diu Hockey on September 23, followed by Hockey Unit of Tamil Nadu and Hockey Gujarat.
The records do not speak well for the Goan boys in the last 16 months. They have conceded 98 goals in 11 matches and scored nine in the process.
In the National championship, held in Rourkela Odisha from May 18 to 28 last year, Goans hockey were hammered 22-0 by Haryana and 7-0 by Chhattisgarh, thus opponents scored 29 goals against them without any reply.
Sagun Malik accompanied the team as manager while the coach column in the Hockey India team list is left blank for the Goans Hockey team.
A few months later, at the 1st West Zone championship of Hockey India held from October 9 to 16 in Rajnandgaon, Chhattisgarh, the embarrassing losses continued with Goans Hockey sub junior boys losing 10-0 to hosts Chhattisgarh, 21-0 to Daman & Diu, Maharashtra trounced them 11-0, Himachal Pradesh made merry with a 9-0 win, went down to Rajasthan 8-4 and Gujarat edged them 2-1 in the U-16 championship.
Thus, they conceded 52 goals in six matches and scored five in the process in the West Zone championship.
Incidentally, Sagun Malik accompanied the team as manager while the hockey India records show no name under the coach column in the team list.
The pounding of the sub-junior continued in the Second West Zone championship of Hockey India held this year from July 23 to 30 July in Surat Gujarat.
They were trounced 11-1 by Chhattisgarh, lost narrowly 3-2 to Daman & Diu and shared points in a rare 2-2 draw with Gujarat, where Aviraj Madgaonkar accompanied the team as coach and Amit Dessai as manager.
