SAVE for the tantrums of the Goa team on the night of their arrival, last month's National Football Championship for the Santosh Trophy in Mumbai drew encomiums from visiting teams. The Himachal Pradesh team manager went so far as to say that his team has not had such hospitality in recent Nationals.
The Western India Football Association president, Praful Patel, also vice-president of the All-India Football Federation, and WIFA assistant secretary Wali Mohammed, who was virtually the CEO of the event, deserve kudos. Especially when it is realised that the AIFF's dissatisfaction with original venues - Nagpur and Akola - forced shifting of the National to Mumbai.
The WIFA had estimated staging the Nationals at Nagpur and Akola would cost about Rs 72 lakh, a figure scaled down to Rs 50 lakh when monetary support from the state government became uncertain. Remarkably, this lowered figure was budgeted for the championship in Mumbai, where hotel tariffs and other expenses are considerably higher. This meant WIFA would have been even more hard pressed to humour the participants, who were entitled to only Rs 120 as daily allowance.
That the teams had no complaints about hospitality speaks of WIFA's extraordinary efforts. Some idea could be had from the relative allowances given to teams for the NFL and Santosh Trophy. According to AIFF, for NFL matches in Mumbai each players is to be given Rs 1,200 per day, while the allowance is exactly one-tenth for the National Championship - Rs 120. The amount is ludicrous in Mumbai.
But this never cropped up as an issue during the National, thanks to the consideration and generosity of WIFA. Even without a sponsor, it met the bill, or rather all of it minus the AIFF grant of Rs 20 lakhs.
This admirable feat is worthy of emulation by other organisers, especially by associations undertaking to conduct the National in the coming years. The WIFA methodology could become the practice or the guidelines in raising necessary huge funds and there can be no doubt that it could be useful in sustaining the conduct of the National as also several other tournaments, major and minor, inter-state and local. This is more so because the takings at the gates at the National, as it had been at even major events like the Rovers Cup, have been nowhere what they were in the past.
The AIFF, which reportedly keeps a tab on everything under its jurisdiction, should be particularly keen to get the expertise of tackling such onerous financial demands. It could benefit from the knowledge and so be a little more easy in mind in the running of the senior, under-21, junior and sub-junior Nationals, besides the Federation Cup and NFL even in the absence of support from sponsors.
If any man could get WIFA to reveal the secret of its success, it would be AIFF president Priya Ranjan Dasmunshi. He could, as he often has, cite the example of the Federation Internationale de Football Association, which makes known the balance sheet of a World Cup organised by a member within three months of its conclusion, besides announcing the share of the profits of members who took part in the final rounds as also of those who did not. After all, transparency is fair play too.