Soccer players of old, the call from Mumbai mills, and the hat-trick that floored Bagan

Back in the day when education alone could be banked upon for a meal ticket in life, sport was at best liberating. School dropout Nandu Angirwal, whose life’s journey was a bicycle ride down the hill in the 1960s, found the open soccer ground at Ghorpadi an emancipation from the limited personal space in his tiny home nearby. Indeed, the lad’s pangs of impoverishment were magically erased when he put on his football shoes sourced cheap from Juna Bazaar.
How nice poverty looks in retrospect, Art Garfunkel had once reminisced during a concert.The 68-year-old Angirwal feels the same when speaking about his past. He is one of the few players whose soccer skills landed him a job in the industrial belt of Pimpri Chinchwad in the 1970s, and just among the handful whose on-field talent later fetched him a higher-paying job with the mills in Mumbai.
Angirwal was employed with Telco in Pune at Rs 400 a month when he got a call to join Mafatlal in Mumbai for twice the salary in 1973. He was in the team when Mafatlal won the prestigious Harwood league in Mumbai from 1976 to 1978. In 1976, his salary had swelled to Rs 1,400 and he was given free accommodation at the company’s Byculla guesthouse.
Then, the tumultous Datta Samant-led mill strike happened in 1982, unsettling the stability of many a worker. Angirwal was forced to return to Pune. He now coaches the students of J N Petit school.
Playing as a right-back for Mafatlal in a match against Orkay Mills in the Nadkarni Cup tournament in the late 70s, Angirwal had unleashed an impressive long-ranger that found the mark. His teammate at Fatima Sports Club in Pune, Rosario Antao, happened to see a clip of that goal in the newsreel that used to be played in the movie-halls. Impressed, Antao called up Angirwal and soon headed to Mumbai to join Orkay.
Now, Antao was a born athlete, having played with Fatima SC while just in the 8th standard at Ornella’s school and having excelled in track events at the industrial meets in Pune while working for Buckau Wolf (now Krupp Industries). He also played handball for six years and was even selected for the Indian team in 1977. However, the government scrapped the team’s visit to Kuwait for an international tournament citing lack of funds. Disillusioned, Antao turned his focus to football.
Antao had a golden patch with Orkay, even going on to captain the side and scoring a famed hat-trick against the feared, star-studded Mohun Bagan in the quarterfinals of the 1978 Rovers Cup. He joined Goa’s Dempo in 1980 and also played for the state team there. On returning to Mumbai to work for Century Rayon, he got a letter of selection for the Indian football team. However, his letter landed at the mill while it was locked out for six months during the 1982 strike. His dream of playing for India lay shattered.
Samson Francis, who played for Tamil United earlier, was the founder of Ghorpadi Young Ones, a team which still plays the leagues. Aspiration drew him too to Mumbai, when he underwent a week’s training session with Mafatlal in 1974. He later moved to Century Rayon, from where he retired. A certified coach from the National Institute of Sports, Francis, at 66, still mentors the Century Rayon team.
In the Pune of the 70s and early 80s, just around 20 clubs played under the aegis of the Poona District Football Association (PDFA). Soccer was largely played and followed in the Pune and Khadki cantonments. Teams like Fatima, Ghorpadi Young Ones, City Club, Youngsters and Shivaji Centre (now Shivajians) were the fancied ones and they had a fair to heavy sprinkling of players from the Goan, Tamil, Muslim and Maharashtrian communities.
During tournaments, spectators would crowd the chalked sidelines of the BJ Medical College and Ammunition Factory Khadki (AFK) grounds. Now, despite the PDFA having around 150 clubs, grounds are hard to come by and spectator interest too is poor, says Deepak Bhalerao of the association. The PDFA gets the Ghorpadi ground for little to nothing, but AFK does not let out its field and BJ Medical College charges a stiff Rs 15,000 per match.
Angirwal fondly recalls the plethora of tournaments that kept soccer vibrant in India then — Rovers Cup, DCM Cup, Durand Cup, Nadkarni Cup, Sait Nagjee Trophy in Kochi and Indian Football Association Shield in Kolkata, among others. “Today, most of these tournaments have either wound up or have lost their charm. Lack of tournaments is hitting India’s prospects of making the big league. The Cooperage in Mumbai would see a near stampede during the Rovers Cup matches then. Now, you have to invite spectators for tournaments,” he rues.