All About Football

Silent revolution of football-our school team performance

Some of you r out of pune.. so u must not be aware of a silent revolution going on.. its football revolution.. many signs of it can be seen,, people wearing football jerseys, everyone has a favourite football team.. heavy discussions about recent matches,, and all this starts from very young age. Following example will surely make u believe that football scene in pune has improved vastly. When I hear about jpp playing in a football tournament, only one figure comes to my mind..-- 7-0. that’s it.. but u know what happened this yr? we sent our team for zilha parishad tournaments in football under-17.. and it won 3 matches and lost 4th match.. and that too defeating don bosco in second round.. can u believe it.. fortunately i was also involved in preparation of that team.. we even took help from internet sites about coaching teams, and sometimes showed taped football matches of world cup and discussed it... if a school with such limited resources and limited talent in football can go football crazy and even win 3 matches, football mania in pune is sure on the rise..


Our JPL

Next thing most of u don’t know is about JPL.. Jnana prabodhini league.. I have to tell u about this. We conducted a 3 month 5 teams football league from mid September to December.. advay joshi (dalya) was the creator and manager of the league… we had a test of football skills of each player and then each player was given a value.. and then managers who had limited points in hand, had to buy each player.. there were 4 teams originally, and we added 5th mid season.. each had one colored jersey.. each squad was of around 15 ppl and matches were 8 a side.. great thing was on each matchday there used to be 45-50 players present.. 50 players on Saturday and Sunday mornings at 7 am on a single ground to play football.. isn’t it great.. it ended on 3rd dec, there were trophies for league wining team, cup winning team, best attacker,midfielder,defender,and manager.. league was played in fierce competitive spirit.. and we had a great experience.. now waiting for JPL season2 starting from mid January..


How it all started…

And I also have tell u how it all started.. it dates back to around 4-5 years.. we had a football passionate group from yuvak vibhag.. who used to play football on Saturday morning each week.. we used to call it champions league… (in the sense league of champions) there were just 10-12 of us but we used to gather very regularly.. on Saturday mornings.. on phatakbag ground.. many of us had no contact in whole week.. and in yuvak vibhag, just playing football for love of it was uncommon thing.. slowly each year some more ppl started coming in, but core group remained constant… eventually we grew so much that we started a league- and that was JPL. In jpl many ppl were such that they didn’t know anything about jnana prabodhini.. and many other players.. now all of 50-60 of us are good friends.. we never imagined that we would come this far.. I am certainly excited about this journey.. and it was just love of football( and some more things ofcourse) that made this happen.. this clearly gives us msg that we should continue doing things which we love to do… even if it has no practical applications.. one day it will certainly become big..

Think today what is the thing that u do just for love of doing it… and never ever stop doing it…

-- Chaitanya Bokil.