Tushar Poojary saves the day for KSA

by Siddharth Yadav December 1, 2017

30th November 2017, Mumbai: Karnataka Sports Association (KSA)’s persistence once again helped them to rescue a point as they drew their MDFA – Mumbai District Football Association Elite Division encounter against Mumbai Strikers 1-1 at Mumbai Football Arena, Andheri.

Although some of the KSA players were furious as they would have ended up winning the match had not for their poor finishing in front of goal. This was KSA’s third consecutive match where they had to come back from behind to get a result.

KSA started on a brighter note with both Roger Sam and Tushar Poojary getting a start after performing brilliantly in their previous encounter against Kenkre FC. Apart from Roger and Tushar, Ashfaq Khan and Hassan Gollawala created numerous openings in the first quarter of the game.

But the newly-promoted Mumbai Strikers had other ideas. They took their time to settle and soon opened the scoring which saw Arnold Mascarenhas executing a beautiful move with a fine strike in the 39th minute. Akshay Devadiga and Ravish D’Souza once again bothered their counterpart’s defense with quick interchanging among themselves.

KSA’s defender Shabbir Shaikh had a good day as he read the game quite well from the back and man-marked Ravish for the majority of the match.

In the second-half, KSA got numerous chances to hit back. Roger could have equalized when his powerful shot was brilliantly denied by Mumbai Strikers’ custodian. A couple of minutes later, Tarique Ansari came close to find the back of the net when his effort sailed over the bar.

Just when Mumbai Strikers thought they would register their first win of the Elite Division campaign, in the 90th minute, a brilliant ball from the right wing was headed home by Tushar Poojary as KSA, once again, snatched a point from a critical situation.