by Suman Gupta
St. Blaise ‘B’ down Sacred Heart 5-4
Mumbai: A spirited St Blaise ‘B’ (Amboli) snatched a fighting 5-4 win against a determined Sacred Heart ‘A’ (Andheri) in a tense and entertaining quarter-finals of the 44th Willingdon Catholic Gymkhana Annual Rink Football Tournament 2024, played under floodlights at the WCG courts.
Strikers Rustin D’Costa, Alister D’Souza, Shreyas Zele, Conroy Concessio, and Sebastian Almeida played a significant role scoring a goal each to secure the win for the Amboli side. Akhil Raj, Akshay Chavan, Bhavesh Kurlekar, and Declan Gonsalves tried their best and struck a goal each to keep Sacred Heart in the fight.
St. Blaise ‘A’ (Amboli) also progressed to the semi-finals scoring a comfortable 4-1 win over Holy Family ‘B’ (Andheri). Egan Fernandes scored a fine hat-trick and Danzel Fernandes netted one for St Blaise. Rohan Kanojia was on target for Holy Family.
Meanwhile, in another close encounter, Our Lady of Health ‘A’ (Sahar) defeated St Joseph’s (Umerkhadi) 5-3 via the tie-breaker after the match finished in a 3-3 draw.
Our Lady of Health were well-served by opportunistic striker Imran Shaikh who notched up a hat-trick while Dixit Bhoj, Sahel Tandel, and Austin Fernandes scored for St Joseph’s to level the match scores and forced the tie-breaker. Imran and Rohit Pal were bang on target for the Sahar outfit in the penalty shootout while St Joseph failed to score from the spot kick.
In another quarter-final match, St Francis Xavier (Kanjur Marg) dominated St Andrew’s (Bandra) charging to a 5-3 win. Shoaib Baig scored four goals and Arvind Raj chipped in with one to complete the win. While. Ranzil Mascarenhas scored a hat-trick for the losing side.
