FORMING a women’s football team is never an easy task as any local football club or association can tell you.
First and foremost, there is no football development programme for girls in most schools and hence, very few are interested in the game.
But the power of Facebook and the inspiring Tamil movie, ‘Bigil’, featuring Vijay as a football coach turning an all-women’s team after going through a rough patch into champions, can change that.
The video of Indian women dressed in colourful saree playing football (with boots to boot) in Penang has recently gone viral after it was posted by Penang Indian Football Association president S. Sri Sangar on the PIFA Facebook page.
It was a photo shoot taken at the Sony Sports Club field in Seberang Prai in May this year with the purpose of drawing attention to a tournament called, Poovai Soccer League, that PIFA intended to organise in July.
The league will offer RM5,000 to the champions and RM3,000 to the runners-up.
But Sri said the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic has forced the inaugural league to be postponed probably to November or December.
“We wanted to have an element of Indian culture for the photo shoot. And we finally settled for the women to wear saree,” Sri, who has been the PIFA president for two terms (four years), told Buletin Mutiara.
“We’ll not hold the league until we get the green light from the Sports Ministry and the standard operating procedures (SOPs) we need to adhere to.”
How this league comes about actually started with two girls – Pavithera TRP Gopal and P. Sumathi – who both approached Sri to request that they would like to play football.
Instead, Sri told them to get more girls or women to join them and play futsal.
The duo then posted an invitation on Facebook. Two days before the match, they came to see Sri and told him that they had received a very good response.
“I thought they had about 10 to 12 people but when they told me 80 responded and wanted to play futsal, I was utterly shocked,” Sri recalled.
Through the help of the Seberang Perai City Council (MBSP) councillor David Marshall, Sri said MBSP allocated RM3,000 which was used to run a carnival tournament for the 80 players. They were divided into six teams.
If Sri and other PIFA officials had thought this was a one-off event, they were wrong. The women have fire in their belly.
“They got highly motivated after the release of the Tamil movie, ‘Bigil’ and wanted to continue playing football.
“We organised training for them and by the third and fourth week, as many as 145 players turned up. A few were from Kulim.
“Our youngest trainee is 16 years old and the oldest is a 53-year-old grandma. Interestingly, we have also three mother-daughter pairs among the trainees,” Sri said.
PIFA, formed in 1949, has currently 24 affiliates.
On a bright note, Sri said seven Penang Indian women have passed the FAM Class 3 referee examination and three have obtained the FAM basic coaching certificate.
He said PIFA would also encourage some of them to take up Sports Science Level 3 examination and also physiotherapy course.
In 2020, PIFA organised its first women’s league competition for them. It ran for two months for the six teams with some sponsorship from Deputy Chief Minister II Prof Dr P. Ramasamy and Bagan Dalam assemblyman Satees Muniandy.
Sri said PIFA was also invited by the FA of Malaysia to take part in the Tun Sharifah Roziah Cup football tournament in April but it has been postponed to October.
PIFA, he said, nevertheless is still preparing a team comprising home-grown players, including four ex-Penang Malay women players, as well as a few other guest players from other states to put up a formidable challenge against other state teams.
Because of the current restrictions on travelling and team training, all the players have to record their self training and submit their videos to coach T. Pachamuthu for monitoring purposes.
Who knows when the tournament gets under way, the once saree-clad Penang Indian women may go on to score creditable results – donning the full football gear, of course.
Story by K.H. Ong
Pix courtesy of Penang Indian Football Association