MARGAO
Goans Hockey Junior team taking part in the Hockey India junior championship in Punjab suffered yet another embarrassing defeat on Wednesday this time losing to Himachal Hockey 11-1.
The boys coached by Riyaz Kamabli, who recently completed his NIS coaching course, thus have suffered their second successive defeat.
In the first match of the group, on Monday they lost 15-1 to Manipur, the North East boys lead the group having defeated Maharashtra 7-0 in their second match yesterday.
The Goans after two matches have now conceded 26 goals and scored two in the process.
The Goan boys who have been turned into the whipping boys of the tournament now will face a wounded Hockey Maharashtra in their last group match, who have won one match and lost one. The one win for Maharashtra came against Hockey Himachal 5-0 and the loss against Manipur yesterday.
Yesterday, the Goans continued from where they left off against Manipur.
If they conceded their first goal against Manipur in the fifth minute on Monday, yesterday it took their opponent’s Himachal just four minutes to gain success on the goal front.
Ashish Kumar, who went on to register a double hat trick struck very early for his team through a penalty corner conversion and four minutes later added a second one also through a penalty corner conversion.
His other four goals came in the 20, 23, 36 and 53, all penalty corner conversions.
Akshay Sharma made it 3-0 in the 13th minute while Goa pulled one back, the only goal they managed to score in the 60-minute duel through the efforts of Sandesh Shivaji Honakhande in the form of a field goal in the 14th minute.
Karanveer Singh made it 4-1 a minute later, thereafter Ashish Kumar two goals made it 6-1.
Karambir Singh joined the goal scoring party with a goal himself in the 28th minute and Akshay Sharma got his name on the scorers list for the second time in the 35th minute and a minute later Ashish Kumar scored his fifth goal of the match.
Himachal Pradesh continued to toy with the Goan defense at will and drill holes with ease to score goals this time Lovepreet Singh scoring a goal in the 46th minute.
Ashish Kumar again got in the goal scoring act thus registering his double hat trick in the 53rd minute.
The Goan junior team, which has four players who did duty for the state team at the 13th Hockey India Junior Men National Championship 2023 Rourkela, Odisha, are not new to such huge-margin defeats.
In June 2023 they had lost all their three matches, losing to Hockey Unit of Tamil Nadu 9-0,
Le Puducherry Hockey 5-2 and 18-0 to Hockey Jharkhand.
