Time for some soul-searching

CRICKET'S POPULARITY may be in peril thanks to Hansie Cronje's confessions but it required no such misdeeds for football, at least in India, to take a veritable down swing. The world's most popular sport, the common man's game as they say, has remained ironically the most neglected discipline in India. True the launch of the National Football League, four seasons ago, ensured a few crores of rupees into the sport, few more lakhs to the leading lights, much to the envy of many other sporting bodies. Many believed that a new chapter in India's football development had begun. That was what the Asian Confederation too thought when it gave its professional advice on the National league. Needless to say there has been a slip, big slide in fact and the latest edition if anything only highlighted the reluctance of corporate bodies to be associated with a sport that did not appear to have a future.

Semblance of the shape of things to come is seen in the way the National Championship for the Santosh Trophy was held after a long time without a sponsor. Further, leading clubs of Calcutta and Goa have begun to drastically slash down the player fee consequent to the backing out of sponsors. Barring exceptions a footballer unlike his counterpart in cricket needs a job to keep his career secure. How many footballers in the middle level can be expected to survive in this scenario and there are a number of talented youngsters who have come up on football skills and given their all in honing that at the cost of education ! Time was when sportsmen were encouraged by the sports quota for various jobs in government and quasi government institutions. Lately this has been dwindling to the point of coming to a standstill as the scene is in Chennai.

This metropolis of course cannot be compared to Margao or Calcutta or even Kochi when it comes to football passion. But there was a certain culture which in the past lent the football setting a recognition, a drama that influenced a goodly crowd. We are talking of the fifties and sixties and earlier too when teams had support, when players yearned for top performance and when leading teams and players had their own set of followers. Money was less, standards high and jobs came to the deserving. As a former Indian star and national coach Arumainayagam recently said the sight of supporters used to be the tonic for him to give his best.

Then again the thrill in a football match is never complete without the ambience of a packed gallery. Old timers say Chennai had this benefit when football action used to be in the moderately sized Corporation Stadium. That was inspiration enough for young footballers with the bonus being getting jobs through their skills. And there have been quite a few who had risen to play for the country. The toil in the maidan used to be worth the trouble.

There has been a dramatic change in the scenario over the years and conflicting interests have been trying to strangle the sport. In keeping with changing times and as a prelude to hosting a major international tourney, the city acquired the most modern football stadium in the country, a 50,000 capacity facility. Sadly however the football ethos has only ebbed. Dilution has set in everywhere, most significantly in the standards of play and this is reflected in the poor turn out even when the gates are free. It so confounded an ITC official a few years ago when he found the continuing low attendance in an all India tournament despite heavy investment on publicity that he wondered if Chennai is fit for a major tourney. As it happened that ITC sponsored tournament never again was to come to the metropolis.

A major contributory factor in pulling down the football standards and thus public interest in Chennai and hence Tamil Nadu is the moratorium on recruitment in Institutions, especially Banks, government undertakings and private companies. Guest players have become the rule than an exception and league a mere ritual that has to be gone through annually. The point is where do the guest players go from here when all avenues for employment are closed. So dismal is the situation, says Radhakrishnan, the Coach of just promoted RBI (a seasoned outfit at one time and a leading force in South India), that he was searching for jobs like `canteen boys', `cleaners', etc. in his office to keep his bunch together because the Bank could not absorb anyone. The point to be noted is that the youngmen who aspire to be `guests' come from economically weak background and look to the day when they could settle down and be a help to the family.

Even worse is the situation say in the Pallavan Transport Corporation team, a first division side, which last year had the distinction of giving the country a promising young goalkeeper in Satishkumar (who since has joined the Tata Football Academy). Coach Chandrasekhar says: maintaining a football team is the last thing that higher ups in the PTC would wish to hear. ``Even though we field the team as PTC, we are actually helped financially by outside agencies. Besides ex- players volunteer to be a part of the team. But how long can this continue?'', he asks in frustration. Similar is the situation in Tube Products or any other Bank.

Even more peculiar is the position with regard to Netaji Sports Club, the only private club in the top division. The club used to be considered the nursery of football talent in the state and in days prior to the recruitment ban was the supplier of players. ``With difficulty we maintain them through our own member- subscriptions. Talents are drawn from various parts of the state and we keep them under one roof during the football season'', said Mr. T. R. Govindarajan, TFA Secretary and a key official of the Club. The boys play with seriousness, keep the club flag high for in the end the best of the lot stand to gain. All that will change now when employment avenues dry up and the cumulative effect will dip in the interest and the quality of talent in times to come.

Barring Tamil Nadu Electricity Board, Southern Railway and ICF, no other team in the Chennai league currently has the benefit of recruiting new players. Even among the three aforesaid teams there is no mass scale induction at any time but a trickle at the most. It is a grave situation but not something that can be generalised considering that India still has pockets of football interest. But what is being experienced in Chennai need not be isolated in the long run, from the overall point of view in the country if the game is allowed to meander as of now. This is the time for football administrators to do some soul searching. The key to the future of the game is in their hands for only a healthy and vibrant sport can attract willing partners for progress, draw milling crowd to savour the action and uplift the lot of footballers in general.

S. R. SURYANARAYAN

Chennai

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