It’s only 5 in the evening but Chennai has just experienced an unexpected spell of rain, and the sun has already gone home for the day, leaving a gloomy sky behind. The vast ground in St. George’s School is filled with puddles of muddy water, and with no sun to shine upon it, hardly seems inviting.
A group of young women, dressed in jerseys and blue shorts, jump and skip over the puddles to find a patch of hard ground. They drop their bags under a tree and check to see if their shoes are laced properly before they enter the field. They tie up their hair, push up their sleeves and take position even as their shoes sink in the mud.
If it’s 5 p.m., then for these women, it’s time for football.
“Football has given me a future,” smiles S. Divya Ganga, a final-year student at Quaid-E-Millath Government College for Women who owes her education to her ability to dribble a ball. “I didn’t perform very well in class X, but football earned me a State-level certificate and a college seat. Since I am a recognised player, it has won me the respect of my peers, which has also helped my self-esteem.”
“It’s very difficult to find girls who are interested in football,” says Sam Daniel Raj, football coach at St. George’s School. Through the Life Sports Academy, Sam trains under-privileged girls from Government schools who have a way with the ball. “For the girls we train, sports is a key element and their certificates win them college admissions and scholarships.”
“Now that I’ve finished my B.Com, I thought I’ll work. But my coach said he’ll get me a free seat for M.Com through the sports quota because I shouldn’t be wasting my talent. This way I can keep studying and also keep playing. Once I get married, there’s no way they are going to let me play, so I might as well do it now,” says Pavithra Gunaseelan, who represented the country in Poland through Slum Soccer in 2013.
The game gives a lot to the women who play the sport but football, essentially, is a man’s sport and that’s a sentiment that the women echo.
“I didn’t know girls could even play football till I was in Class X,” standard,” confesses Divya Ganga. “Even then, I wasn’t confident that girls could play as well as boys do.”
“When you play with boys you learn how to defend yourself better. I used to be scared of boys before, now I’m not scared to face them anymore,” says Divya Ganga. These female footballers often get to practise with their male counterparts and this is something they look forward to because it gives them a chance to get better at the game. “Even boys smaller than us are faster, so when we play with them, we get to work on our speed,” says M. Nandhini, a footballer from Ethiraj College.
A rough sport with a high risk of injury, most women are hesitant to take up football. The ones who do usually have other roadblocks to deal with — Sagayamary L. , who had to deal with opposition and concerned parents even before she started playing the sport at the age of 12, says, “My parents were worried about what others would think because I’d finish practice only at 7 p.m. and come home late.”
Sagayamary, who has finished her Masters and is currently seeking employment, will continue playing football only if she manages to find the time. “There’s definitely a future in football. You can go to the National Institute of Sports and become a professional coach or you can do a Bachelor’s degree in Physical Education and become a PT teacher. But you only get this sort of a future; a woman footballer can’t get a job in the Railways because they only have a football team for men,” says Sagayamary, who is looking to work in the software or banking sector.
“Men have teams they can play for, but women don’t have such options, there’s no benefit after college,” says Nandhini, who feels there isn’t much a woman can do with a certificate saying she was a football star in college.
Divya Ganga, still an undergraduate, has already made plans for her future that involve football. “I want to coach girls like me,” says Divya Ganga, who wants to train to be a football coach. “There are lots of girls who are talented and struggle more than I do, and I want to help them.”
Football is decidedly a tough game for a girl to make a name for herself in and these women fight the odds to be considered serious players. Yet, there is no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
“It’s impossible to get a supportive husband who’ll let you play,” complains Mahalakshmi S., a 19-year-old footballer from SDNB Vaishnav College, who hopes to get into the Army. “After college, there are very few platforms for girls to play football. The rare few who do find a club to play for, can only play till they turn 30 because after that, they get slower,” explains Pamala Lincy, a coach at St. George’s School.
Even though discrimination is rife in football, these young women have come to terms with it because of the odds they’ve had to fight to establish themselves as players. Largely, they’re quite grateful for the opportunity and to the sport. “I play for the love of the game,” says Nandhini and that’s easy to believe because, for these women, football is not just about the game, it’s about education and empowerment and finding a sense of self worth that goes beyond the field.
