Panjim Footballers hold defending champions Rising Student Club to a draw

by Chittu Shetty May 13, 2019

The resilient Panjim Footballers held on to a 1-1 draw against Rising Student Club of Odisha at the Guru Nanak Stadium in Ludhiana, on Monday.

Karishma Shirvoikar had scored for Panjim early on, but Satyabati Khadia equalised for RSC just before the half time break. Panjim goalkeeper Ashika Gadekar was adjudged Player of the Match for her heroics under the bar.

It was another game between two equally matched sides at the Guru Nanak Stadium. Rising Student Club were more dominant in the middle of the park and controlled long bouts of possession.

However, it was Panjim, against the run of play, who managed to take the lead, much in the same fashion as they had scored in their previous matches. An aerial through ball played in behind the defence was chanced by Karishma Shirvoikar, as she got to it just before the RSC keeper Puja Sahu and chipped it over her head into the goal.

Determined to get back on level terms, RSC launched a flurry of attacks. Eventually, striker Satyabati Khadia changed the Odisha side’s coach’s half-time talk as she emerged victorious out of a melee inside the Panjim box and nodded in a rebound from the keeper.

RSC came out with more determination to take the lead in the second half. However, Panjim had tweaked their tactics slightly, spreading the ball out to the flanks to stretch the RSC defence. This resulted in more frequent attacks by the Goan side.

Conversely, the side from Odisha started to take advantage of that to launch counter attacks of their own as they used their left winger Devneta Roy to hold the ball up and play the pacey forward Satyabati through. Devneta, however, did not last the full match, and was soon replaced by Jyosna Kishan.

Towards the end, RSC pushed substitute Ashrita Kangadi forward and used the legs of Khadia to destroy Panjim’s attacks in the middle of the park. While the Odisha side threw the proverbial kitchen sink in the dying moments, they failed to come up with the goal as the match ended in a draw. Panjim captain Linda Colaco was show a red card after the full-time whistle for indecent conduct.

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Player of the Match – Ashika Gadekar

“We wanted to score the goal, we played hard, played our best. I wanted to save our team. We wanted to win so the strikers tried to score but it wasn’t our day.”

~ Ashika Gadekar

– Courtesy of AIFF media and @WomensFootieIND

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