A decaying sport

Covering local sports events in the city of Chennai is a task filled with lot of pitfalls and less of pleasure.

There is no scope for playing with words for with a strict 200 word "orders". And there is little you can do by way of explaining things.

On some days, local sports go out of control. Like it happened on Friday when I covereed the match between Chennai Customs and Indian Bank in the State-ranking football tournament at the Nehru Stadium.

In normal days, players play a rough game, abuse the referee when decisions go against their team. These are considered normal today.

Referee V. Subramani was slapped by a Customs player when the former cautioned him with a yellow card for foul play.

When the match was coming to a close, I suddenly saw a Customs player doing a Jackie Chan.

For a moment, I wondered whether I was seeing a huge bird. That Customs man gave a flying kick to an Indian Bank forward for pulling the former down.

The football scene is seeing the worst of times with virtually nobody coming to the stadium (except for some drunken b****). These b** threaten the referee with words "nee vella vaa unna parthikeran.."

After the "flying kick" incident, an official narrated me a tale of how referee Pradeep Kumar tackled such incidents.

During one of local league matches last season, Pradeep had given a contentious decision which the teams' fans did not like. They kept berating him throughout the contest.

As Pradeep left the stadium, couple of unruly elements surrounded him. Seeing them, Pradeep said, "Vangada, ennada enna Aruvalala vettuvengala..vangada..naa readydhan.."

Seeing a reputed referee ready for a fight, the motley crowd dispersed.

Such is the state of football in the city, which has seen in the early 60s and 70s crowd swelling for all local tournaments.

For a reporter such incidents only deepens the animosity towards the game.

Not only has the quality of game dipped, such behaviour only deepens the existing anger.