It’s a cool, pleasant day in Mapusa, a small town 13 km north of Panaji in Goa. A group of girls, one half in purple jerseys, the other in turquoise, is kicking around a football and trying to outwit each other in the town’s Duler Stadium. The crowd looks on eagerly, waiting to jump up and cheer the girls on.
Lanky Delhi girl Jyoti Burrett, in purple, takes a ferocious shot at the goal but the opponent goalkeeper, Saba Parveen from Mumbra, Maharashtra, tames it just in time.
Saba’s team, Turquoise Female Autonomy, immediately plunges into a counter-attack as Karishma Shirvoikar, another determined Maharashtrian, dribbles past an array of defenders to reach the opposite box in a jiffy. But any further march is stopped by Jyoti’s team, Purple Women’s Empowerment.
Jyoti then takes another shot at the goal, a long ranger that sails past ’keeper Saba. The crowd, consisting largely of other players from the tournament and their families and friends, as also locals, erupts in a loud cheer. Turquoise fight back with all their might, but Purple’s Alisha Tavares and Candice Fernandes, both local girls, defend their team squarely. The gripping match comes to an end with Purple Women’s Empowerment defeating Turquoise Female Autonomy, 1-0, to win the first-ever Discover Football tournament.
Ebony, ivory and feminism
The names of the teams hint at the tournament’s raison d’être and its stakeholders. In the three other play-offs conducted the same day, Cream Gender Equality beat Ebony Equal Opportunity, 2-0, to come third in the tournament. Silver Self-Determination scored a whopping 6-2 against Blue Bodily Integrity to rank fifth. Golden Grow Visibility scored a hat-trick against Crimson Mutual Consent to position themselves seventh in the tournament.
The players are not big names but the audience cheers on nonetheless. The girls have come from all over the country: Punjab, West Bengal, Uttarakhand, Karnataka, Maharashtra, and they have survived challenging circumstances; a few of them are still very new to the game. Yet, they all demonstrate an insatiable hunger to play and win. Looking at them shout and run, Goa resident Sebastian Fernandes, 70, says that with a little more training, these girls could win trophies for the country.
Raring to go
Back in 2007, when Jyoti left her home-town, Dehradun, and moved to Delhi for college, the first thing she looked for was a group of girls to play football with. But most schools and colleges then didn’t have a girls’ team as football was not considered a woman’s game.
So, she played with the boys in the neighbourhood until, years later, she met a few more like her, all raring to kick some ball.
As soon as the girls started playing, they realised they needed a dedicated space to train because wherever they went, men turned up to harass or shoo them away. “We went around town and tried playing on municipality grounds but everywhere the experience was the same. Finally, we located a municipality ground that was free on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, between 4.00 p.m. and 6.00 p.m. Another football academy had rented it on the other days to train their boys. We went through a tedious process that involved lengthy applications, strict permissions and persuading of officials and finally were permitted to use the facility. But the minute we landed up to practise, the academy boys reached there as well. It was a planned confrontation and no amount of persuasion or arguing helped. They simply did not want us girls to use their grounds,” Jyoti recalls.
It took some amount of local political support and negotiations with officials for the girls to be able to play on the grounds. By that time, Jyoti’s team, the Delhi Women’s Football Players’ Welfare Association, was already playing at the national level.
Our bodies, our games
Discover Football is a non-profit initiative founded in Berlin in 2009, aimed at empowering women through the game. With the help of volunteers worldwide, Discover Football has managed to hold tournaments with players from various countries participating. This is the first time the tournament was held in India as part of ‘Our Bodies, Our Rights, Our Games’ football festival.
The aim of the festival, organisers said, is to recognise and acknowledge the trials and tribulations women players go through for the sake of football. Workshops on empowerment and technical skills were also part of the festival.
Expanding boundaries
“The festival attempted to celebrate women footballers in the country and also create awareness about their rights and responsibilities,” said Lea Goelnitz, the India director of Discover Football. “Our idea was to bring football and women’s rights together, to promote the understanding of important issues women face when they choose to expand their boundaries.”
The festival celebrated women footballers and also empowered young girls.
Gayatri Buragohain, founder of Feminist Approach to Technology (FAT) that conducted workshops on women’s rights and growing visibility through social media and technology, said the group was an immensely diverse one. “Some of them were excellent with the camera while others hadn’t used one ever. Yet, they were all enthusiastic to learn and even shot their own photo essays on the theme of women’s empowerment and sports.”
The festival also gave the girls an opportunity to train under reputed international coaches from Kenya, Jordan, Nepal, Argentina, Cameroon, Canada, Australia, and South Africa. Fomum Victorine Agum, a coach from Cameroon who also runs her own football academy, said, “The girls have a spark in them and I saw some great talent in both the players and the local coaches. They simply need to play more leagues and championships. India definitely needs to bring football to the grassroots, to the girls in schools and colleges.”
And that’s the major takeaway. Women’s football at every level needs more playing opportunities, and the talent must be harnessed right at school level. And then maybe, young girls and women will be able to claim their rightful place in society and become visible to an apparently blind society.
The writer, based in Vijayawada, is an enthusiast for all things positive.
