Kolkata – The City of Joy

Thursday, 11th November 2010
Nothing can prepare you for what Kolkata will throw at you but our arrival was like something out of a movie. After being ushered through Passport Control we were met at the airport exit by chaperones and presented garlands of flowers before being ushered onto a bus and given a police escort through the thronged streets of Kolkata.

Live TV filmed myself, the Team Manager Chris Dolby and Team Captain Greg Wright on the journey from the airport to our magnificent hotel, The Taj Bengal, provided by our hosts CMG Group. Traffic noise is constant on the thronged city roads. Taxis, bicycles and cars hoot furiously at each other to gain inches in the queue to wherever everyone else also appears to be heading. Passengers cling precariously to buses and have little chance of being able to get off, even if they wanted to.

Barbers shave customers in the street, street vendors sell arrays of snacks and herds of goats graze in the city parks as cattle tied to lamp-posts gaze on. Everywhere people look on bemused but lots wave as we eventually start to make headway. Poverty is visible and houses made from rags, tarpaulin and tyres are numerous.

Our first engagement is a press conference attended by around twenty TV crews and numerous journalists. The pictures make all of the press the following morning. Lots of media interest is focused on Surav Ganguly, the ex cricketer and Kolkata legend who is guesting for Mohammedan S.C in the number 99 jersey in the match that follows ours at the 120,000 capacity Salt Lake Stadium. 

To blow away the cobwebs, the lads have a light training session at nearby Mohammedan Sporting Club under the watchful gaze of more reporters and TV crews. Around a hundred spectators watch on avidly from the stands. Pictures of Dev from Coronation Street adorn the walls of the Mohammedan social club as it looks like he is a president of the club. The weather is close but bearable, but this is Indian winter.

The players have an early night to try and get body clocks onto Kolkata time (5.5 hours in front of UK time).

Friday, 12th November 2010

We leave the hotel at 1 p.m. for the stadium accompanied by our police out-riders and reach the stadium at 1.45 p.m. The stadium is doubling up as the venue for a gigantic machinery fair and an anti-malaria rally.

The team is ably assisted by Garcia, a charming man who assisted in training the team in its training session yesterday. He was supposed to be doing physio duties but that got lost in translation and had the lads doing backward laps through cones. Gav Smith was presented with a pair of Brazilian flip-flops by Garcia during the pre-match changing room talk.
 
The lads take a while to get used to the heat but play admirably against Mohun Bagan, with youngsters Rutkowski and Galloway notably stepping up to the occasion. The Mohun Bagan ‘keeper makes a superb save from a Burbeary penalty after Eagers is flattened by a combination of their keeper and the last defender, who is lucky to escape a red card. Young Jordan has to go off suffering from concussion.

The game swings both ways but is eventually settled with a neat flick from a corner to Mohun Bagan. There was still time for a cracking header from Gav Smith to be smartly saved almost on the final whistle.

Although the result is disappointing, the goodwill created is enormous and witnessed by the British High Commissioner to India who has taken time out to watch the match. The 2018 Back the Bid boards have been seen by millions on the live Indian TV transmission and can only enhance the standing of the World’s First Football Club, Sheffield FC.

The players head off for a well deserved night off in Kolkata under the watchful eye of Dolbs but the word on the street is that the girls tend to stay at home on a Friday so there may be some disappointed faces at breakfast tomorrow! 

Comprehensive photos from Sheffield FC's trip to India can be found by visiting the Club's Flickr website at http://www.flickr.com/photos/sheffieldfc