The Hindu : Sport / Football : Rafi stars for SBT

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Wednesday, Feb 22, 2006

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Sport - Football

Rafi stars for SBT

Principal Correspondent

MANJERI: Mohammed Rafi has an unenviable task in the on-going State inter-club football championship. The young striker has to carry SBT's attack on his shoulders, in the absence of his senior colleagues, Asif Sahir, Abdul Hakkim and Abdul Noushad.

He couldn't have done better than what he has already — five goals in two games, and the three on Tuesday against Evergreen, the local outfit, has put SBT in the semifinals. The bankmen won 3-1, with Rafi scoring an old-fashioned hat-trick within a space of 25 mintues in the opening half.

Injuries galore

He didn't return after the interval, as he joined the alarming list of injured players in the SBT camp. That he was replaced by the team's main 'keeper Jean Christian tells the sad tale of SBT. Besides Rafi, eight men are nursing injuries. Add to that list two players, N.P. Pradeep and Abdul Hakim, who have been called up for the Indian camp.

Evergreen though didn't have the resources to trouble the new-look SBT. The host did create a few chances in the second half, but a combination of superb defending by SBT and poor finishing by its evidently nervous strikers meant that it would score just one goal — that too from the spot, in the 76th minute, through Sadiq, after V. Sivakumar was penalised for a foul on Feroze.

Rafi's last two goals also scored from the same spot — in the 29th minute, when he was felled by custodian Shoib Mohammed, and in the 43rd (for a foul by Sadiq on Harris).

Rafi's first goal was far prettier, as he found the right angle from close in after receiving an excellent through ball from C.J. Renil, who impressed for a second time in a row.

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