Maris Stella beat De Mazenod to take championship in the Fustal Soccer Carnival organized by St Joseph’s college and held at Darley road this weekend.
The Soccer Advisory committee of St. Joseph’s College successfully completed five years in promoting the shortest form of the modern game of soccer. This soccer extravaganza has now turned out to be a very eagerly anticipated calendar event of St. Joseph’s College and school football in general with the organizers expanding this event into a truly national sporting event.
This year’s tournament saw participation from 45 schools from all over the country competing in 6 ages categories namely Under 10, Under 11, Under 13, Under 15, Under 17 and 19. In total about 1500 young budding footballers took part.
The event was worked off in four levels – Cup, Plate, Bowl, Saucer.
The main focus of this endeavor is the grass root in order to search and expose talent as this in fact is a perfect stepping stone for young and talented soccer players to shine. Futsal creates highly technical and skillful players as it requires it’s players to be quite technically sound.
The Co-sponsors for the tournament are Cargills Quality Dairies and the platinum sponsors will be one of the leading clubs in the A division Renown Sports Club.
The chairman of the St. Joseph’s College Football Association, Mr.Balendra Anthony’s vision is to show the hidden talents of the young children to the country. Mr. Balendra Anthony and his team have worked hard to make this event reach success. The Chief Guest for the event will be the President of the FFSL, Mr. Ranjith Rodrigo and the Guest of honour Mr. Buddhisa Herath, General Manager of Cargills Quality Dairies.
Champions of the junior category- Under 13- Royal College and Under 15- Bomiriya Central.
Senior teams went ferocious battle with strong contenders going up against each other throughout the tournament.
In the under 17 category Zahira College, Colombo beat De Mazenod College, Kandana – 3 goals to 1 in order to become the champions. Maris Stella College beat Joseph Vaz Wennappuwa 1-0 in the quarter finals. Meanwhile De Mazenod College scored 2 goals against the kings of soccer Zahira College Colombo to qualify for the semi-finals.
The first semi-final of the U 19 category was between St. Joseph’s College Colombo and Maris Stella College. The Josephians failed to make it to the final on their home ground as the Maris Stella captain Anton Nadeeshan scored a hat-trick in the other semi-final De Mazenod won over St. Benedicts College in a penalty shoot-out.
Maris Stella and De Mazenod Kandana entered the finals and Maris Stella ousted De Mazenod 2 goals to 1 as striker Ashen Jeewantha scored both the goals for Maris Stella. Though De Mazenod failed to bounce back they managed to beat few of the good teams on their way to the finals. The coach of the champion team Mr. Reginold de France stated he was happy with his team performance.
Man of the match award, the Clara Pieris Memorial Challenge Trophy was awarded to Ashen Jeewantha who showed outstanding performance throughout the tournament as he scored most of the goals for his team.
