St. Andrews College makes it seven in a row

by Siddharth Yadav March 1, 2018

1st March 2018, Mumbai: For the seventh year running, Bandra’s St. Andrews College reigned supreme in the Mumbai University Girls’ Football Championship. The Bandra-based college won the Championship on goal difference as they were tied with Pillai’s College on seven points each. In the culminated match, St. Andrews College defeated St. Xavier’s College 6-0, but the fascinating thing was St. Andrews had to win this tie by a margin of six goals which they eventually did, in the last minute.

Unlike the previous years, which were solely knockout rounds, this year the games were held in a different format, that is, a knockout round and a league stage. The knockout round was meant to be a qualifier stage which consisted of eight teams out of which only four teams would qualify for the league rounds. The league stage had four teams, St. Andrew’s College, Pillai’s College, St. Xavier’s College and Jai Hind College.

Pillai’s College finished their campaign with seven points in three games and had a strong goal difference of 16 goals. St. Andrews had to face St. Xavier’s in the final match of the league where they had to complete a tough task of winning the game by a margin of six goals at least.

In the first half of the game, St. Andrews scored twice and still had four goals to score to do the unthinkable. The Bandra-based College could only hear everyone chanting for St. Xavier’s, over and over again. As the time went running, the dream of lifting the Championship started to fade away. In the last ten minutes of the game, St. Andrews still needed to score three goals to win and that’s where the magic started.

Shalene D’souza scored two quick goals, equalizing her College with the goal difference of Pillai’s. And, just before the final whistle, the captain, Delfiya Pereira, scored the winning goal, completing a miraculous performance to help St. Andrews retain the Girls’ Championship for the seventh year running.

Nishad Mandalkar (Coach): We played as a team and didn’t give up until the last minute. Some of them say it’s a luck that St Andrews College won but I feel it is all about hard work & efforts which we gave throughout the league. Thank you, team, for a great performance. Hope to see the same next year.

Januarita D’souza (Sports Director): As the saying goes, hard work pays off. Our girls played amazingly like fighters until the last minute to keep the title to themselves. They proved that even at crucial times, the word ‘IMPOSSIBLE equals I-M-POSSIBLE is true. They trained hard by missing their lectures. It is the team’s unity that is strong. And one has to be an Andrean to be a Champion.

Delfiya Pereira (Captain):  Eight months of training and all came down to these two days! It was going to be the last year that I along with 7 other players would be playing for Andrew’s and we wanted to continue being the defending champions. I just want to thank Nishad sir and Januarita ma’am for trusting the team and motivating us for each and every practice and being there for all the games. Last but not the least, I would just thank my team for trusting me and motivating me when I lost hope. Their energy kept me alive to push myself. It’s not how you start the game but on what note you finish it. And I think we’ve been proving ourselves that we indeed are the champions.