P.V. Vinoy and P.V. Abhilash happy with their respective teams’ perfeformances

by Siddharth Yadav August 17, 2015

Western Railways lifted their 3rd Independence Cup crown on Saturday 15th August with a 5-4 win over Indian Navy on penalties

PV Vinoy (WR) and PV Abhilash (IN) spoke to Football Counter about their experience, preparations, new recruits, expectations.

“Due to rains we were unable to find grounds for preparing ourselves so we had to concentrate on conditioning camp, fitness training. Mahalaxmi Race Course and Juhu were among the places we practiced the most.”, said Western Railway coach PV Vinoy when asked about team preparations prior to the Independence Cup 2015.

As it is said, “Hard work pays off”, this saying is very much related to Western Railway’s players and Managements as they were runner up to Indian Navy last year at the same stage and same tournament.

“I had confidence in my players, I knew we would pull this off. We dominated in last year’s final but couldn’t find the goal.”, when asked about his expectations prior to the tournament.

Linekar Machado who was pretty much the player of the tournament scored four times throughout the tournament and was a vital member in PV Vinoy’s Western Railway.

Two of his strikes in semi-final against Karnataka SA were outstanding, one of that strikes came from 20 yards when his attempted shot curled all the way and found the net in the right bottom corner.

“Linekar was tremendous; he gave 100% in the whole tournament. He was among those players who kept working hard.”

Western Railway’s new goalkeeper, Jagroop Singh from Punjab was in center of attraction after showing some world class reflexes.

“Our new signing Jagroop Singh from Punjab was a key member in our squad, his superb reflex save in the second half is one example of that.”

When asked about MDFA Elite division preparations, PV Vinoy added “We have already started our preparations for Elite division. Training camps, fitness training has been already started. We are also working for All India Railways Tournament which will be commence later this year, last year we won it, that too after 18 years. That sums up our preparations.”

PV Abhilash, the coach of Indian Navy Football Team when asked about team preparations prior to the Independence Cup and Elite division he said, “We mainly concentrated on fitness prior to the tournament, throughout the Independence Cup our team played excellent. The only thing which went wrong was penalties.”

He further added, “Yes, we have started our preparations for Elite, the boys get leave for only one month so we keep practicing throughout the year.”

“It was down to penalties which are matter of luck that’s it. We played the whole day and still performed well in each round which was quite excellent.” he added when asked what went wrong in the final.

“We were champions in the last two edition of this tournament so obviously my expectation was to win this year as well. But playing just twenty minutes a half and directly moving to penalties is much difficult; there wasn’t much time to get settled.”

When asked about any standout players, PV Abhilash said, “Shahir, our left back played very well. With him even Anoop Pauly and Akash Kamble did exceptional.”