Students being forced to play for varsity: Kenkre FC

City-based Kenkre FC has alleged that seven of its players, who are also students of Mumbai University, are being forced to play for the varsity team.

One of the club’s official Joshua Lewis has claimed that his team’s chances in the MDFA has been affected by the absence of seven of his players, who have left for Jabalpur on Thursday night to play in the All India Inter-University football championship. He said that the college boys were threatened with disciplinary action if they did not agree to play for the varsity.

However, the Mumbai University sports director UN Kendre has denied the claims that the footballers were threatened with any kind of disciplinary action.

Lewis claimed, “Our players had not attended the trials for the University team that followed the intercollegiate tournament from the beginning. They are all in the final year of their graduation and chose to go because they were told that they will be disallowed to give their exams if they do not play in this tournament.”

He added, “They will be returning only on the 24th and hence will be unavailable for our remaining four league games.”

The absence of the seven college boys from the team cost Kenkre dearly as they could turn up with only 12 players as three of their squad members were suffering from injuries. Playing I-League side Mumbai FC, they lost 5-1, at Cooperage Ground, on Thursday.

“We are not complaining about the result, but these organisations have to be more considerate towards the teams. We requested MDFA to delay our matches until our players return but our plea has fallen on deaf ears.” Lewis added.

Kendre said, “We only issued letters to the principals of the colleges, requesting them to send the shortlisted players for the trials. Hence, it was up to the colleges to decide what action was to be taken if they chose not to attend the selection.”

He added, “Considering that most of these players got admission because of the sports quota they should play for the university. The tournament will only take two weeks out of their year; they can play for their clubs for the rest of the time.”

One of the players who did not wish to be named said, “Both the MDFA Elite Division and the inter-university tournament are important for us. It is unfortunate that the dates are clashing as we would have liked to participate in both the tournaments.”

Results
Elite Div: ONGC 2 (Kailash Patil, Tariq Ahmed) bt Akbar Travels 1 (Mohd Aslam); Mumbai FC 5 (Goutam Debnath, Ashutosh Mehta, PC Lalwmpuia, Manuel D’Souza, C Malsawmkima) bt Kenkre FC 1 (Mathew Odje)

Super Div: Income Tax 2 (Camilo Mendes 2) bt Intelenet 0