Greater Mumbai Police beats Father Angel 2-0 on the back of an excellent first-half display

by Balbir Singh December 16, 2015

Greater Mumbai Police featured versus Father Agnel at the St. Xavier’s ground, Parel on 15th December 2015, Tuesday in the Mumbai District Football Association Super Division Group ‘C’ match. G.M. Police clinched maximum points from Fr. Agnel on the back of an excellent first-half performance. Jai Gadge opened the scoring in the 9^th minute and Panir Seehain doubled the lead 3 minutes, later.

The opening goal came for Greater Mumbai Police close to the 10th minute mark, when no.9 Jai Gadge scrappily converted the rebound from close after he saw his initial shot getting saved from pointblank range by the Fr. Agnel goalkeeper. G.M. Police didn’t take time to double the lead and scored again 3 minutes later via no.44 Panir Seehain, who slammed-in a powerful shot past the goalkeeper after beating two Fr. Angel defenders on his way to goal.

In the first-15 minutes, despite being 2 goals down Fr. Agnel didn’t look dispirited and looked to get back into the game and had a hatful of decent chances, but haven’t had any clear-cut chance to go clear-through on goal.
As the game progressed, both sides became relatively frustrated with themselves in-front of goal and missed-out on ‘n’ number of chances either by hitting the ball off-target or by a poor pass in the final-third area.

With the half reaching to its closing moments, Fr. Agnel received the final chance from a close-range free-kick, but the goalkeeper made a fine stop to keep G.M. Police in touching distance for a win.

Into the 2nd-45 minutes of the game, and neither side looked to better itself in an attacking sense. Both sides looked in equal dismay in front of goal and both the goalkeepers were largely untroubled during the early parts of the second-half. As the half progressed, Fr. Agnel came-out as a dominant side and with the pressure mounting over G.M. Police, who were in continuous burdened from a wave of attacking pressure from Fr. Agnel, no.11 Yogesh Jadhav took a toll and received a second yellow-card while he was being substituted for time wasting.

For large parts of the 2nd-half, Fr. Agnel created a number of genuine goal-scoring chances, but couldn’t get past an excellent Gajanand Sulebhavekar in goal for G.M. Police, who kept his side’s lead intact until the final whistle, and undoubtedly singlehandedly kept his team’s boat sailing.

A match which could’ve gone either way if not for the wonderful and timely saves from the G.M. Police goalkeeper. Some referee decisions could’ve changed the course of the game. But, largely it was a match whose full-time result was decided in the early minutes of the first-half and not the full-90 minutes.