The Hindu : Sport / Football : Nethaji keeps winning

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Tuesday, Jan 06, 2009
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Nethaji keeps winning

Chennai: Nethaji SC extended its perfect start to the St. Joseph’s-CFA Senior Division football season to four wins in four games with a 3-1 canter against ICF on Monday.

ICF, which won both its games before this one, looked shell-shocked by the physicality of Nethaji’s Ivorian strike partnership of Issodf Hettiereyo and Dombia Mamadou, which was fed repeatedly with long balls.

One such attack led to Nethaji’s first corner of the match, in the sixth minute. R. Kowsigan’s corner was about the least threatening ICF goalkeeper J. John David must have faced all season, but he still managed to spill it into the net after catching it waist-high: a most fortuitous goal.

Nothing fortuitous

There was nothing fortuitous about Nethaji’s second, which came three minutes later. Receiving the ball about 40 yards from goal from Hettiereyo, who had intercepted a weak clearance from the defence, Dombia swung his left foot and made such sweet contact with the ball that it wobbled the underside of the net roof nanoseconds later!

ICF pulled a goal back seven minutes into the second half, R.P. Ashok Kumar sliding in a penalty after Kowsigan had pushed ICF centre-forward T. Dhadeus in the box in a set-piece melee.

Three minutes from the end of normal time, Nethaji shut the lid with a surgical counter-attack. Right back K.S. Satheesh slid the ball down the right to man-of-the-match Dombia, whose cross was met by the side of Issodf’s perfectly angled boot.

Earlier, Raja Prasath and David Anand scored for Ragoon FC to clinch a 2-0 win over Madras Eagles in the first division.

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