In the ongoing State Football League, four matches were played at Polo Ground and Synthetic Turf TRC venues on September 24, which were witnessed by thousands of spectators.

Football fans in huge numbers had gathered from early afternoon to support their favourite teams and players. They were enthralled by some spectacular football as most of the matches turned out to be closely contested affairs.

In the first A-Division match, played at Polo Ground, Fort View FC defeated Court Road FC by a solitary goal a closely contested affair. Both the teams played aggressive football throughout the match, but Abnan Tariq managed to score one goal for the winning team. In the other A-Division match, Syed Taj-ud-Din FC won after getting a walkover as the opposite team Al-Fatah FC failed to report at the venue.

In the semi-final match of B-Division, played at Synthetic Turf TRC, IFC Nowgam defeated Tawheed FC by two goals to nil. The IFC Nowgam played aggressive football and were rewarded with two goals. Owais Dar and Umer Rashid were the scorers for the winning team. With this victory, IFC Nowgam has qualified for the final of the B-Division event while Tawheed FC has been out of the tournament.

In Super-Division match also played at Synthetic Turf TRC, Young Lal Chowk FC played a goalless draw with Young Maharaja FC. Both the team got several chances to score but wasted all those and the 0-0 scoreline at the end of the match was a fair result for both the teams.

In the Premier-Division match, also played at Synthetic Turf TRC, Maharaja Sports defeated J&K Forest XI by two goals to nil. Mahraja Sports opened their account in just seventh minute of the play as defender Umer chipped a pass to forward Imran, who made no mistake to convert it into a goal. The Forest players tried their best to score an equaliser, but couldn’t break the defence line of the Maharaja Sports. In 77th minute Mahraja Sports sealed the fate of the match in their favour when Raja Musharaf doubled the lead for them.

Despite their victory over Forest, the Maharaja Team is two points behind the Real Kashmir FC in the group and given the qualification format, they are not still sure whether they will progress further in the group or not.

Meanwhile, seeing the response of the fans and the popularity of the event, J&K Football Association (JKFA) is making all efforts to make it count. The football governing body in the state has thanked the public for their overwhelming response to the event and hoped in future also they will do the same.

“Football is the most popular game of the state and is game of masses. It has tremendous following in the state and can rightly be termed as most popular sports of J&K. The other fact that makes football very special is that it has given state number of heroes and most importantly the player who captained Indian national team,” said JKFA President Zamir Thakur.

Guest