Rough and tough genes in the beaches of Tamil Nadu's Thoothoor

By the time the first rays of the sun fall on the sandy beaches of Thoothoor, a coastal hamlet in Kanyakumari district of Tamil Nadu, footballs will already be rolling on the numerous grassless grounds that dot the village.

For the people of Thoothoor, every day begins and ends with one thing — a game of football. Everything that happens in between is secondary, much like the purposeless half-time sideshows that fans watching Indian Super League matches often have to endure.

The same goes for seven of its neighbouring villages — Erayumanthurai, Poothurai, Chinnathurai, Eravi Puthenthurai (EP Thurai), Vallavilai, Marthandanthurai, and Neerodi — a nine-kilometre coastal belt bubbling with the passion for the beautiful game and, if recent revelations are any indication, with talent too.

“When we are not at sea, we are on the ground kicking a ball around. When there is too much of the sun, we resort to a deck of cards under a shade near the ground and that too reluctantly,” says Mitlon P from EP Thurai. Milton could be gone for weeks on a fishing boat but will report at the ground the very morning he is back from seafaring.

Travel along the long winding road parallel to the sea through these villages and you will notice that every inch of open space has been converted into a football ground. On these makeshift grounds, children in knock-off shirts of Arsenal and Barcelona trade school lessons for barefoot football, even as temperatures soar to 40 degrees at midday. 

“You won’t see people playing any other sport here. No cricket. No volleyball. Football is the only way of life for us,” says Shyju R. “We have children as young as five to elders who are 75 playing on the same strip. Even the parish priest joins in at times.

No one has taught us how to play. The youngsters watch and learn from the elders and the cycle repeats,” he says. A largely Christian community, there is an unwritten rule in these parts that each parish of the Thoothoor forane should have an educational institution, a football club, a library and a playground under them. The clubs are named after the patron saints of their respective parishes — St Jude’s Club of Chinnathurai, St Antony’s Club of Vallavilai and so on.

Every club conducts their own tournaments throughout the year, but the big ones take place in tandem with Easter and Christmas festivities. The seven-a-side games pull massive crowds and the rivalry is fierce between the villages.

It is hardly a matter of surprise that majority of petty cases registered by the local police are football-related. Who said football hooliganism was an European phenomenon?

But for all the passion for football spanning several decades, Thoothoor had very little to show for it in terms of churning out professional footballers until recent times.

It was only in 1993 that Louis Cleetus become the first footballer from the region to join a departmental side, when he nabbed a job with the Department of Telecom.

“Though we inherited the passion for football from Kerala, we never get the opportunities to prove ourselves there. I attended trials for the Kerala State Electricity Board and AG’s Office in Thiruvananthapuram but was overlooked as I was a Tamilian. The only option for me was to move to Chennai where I signed for the Reserve Bank of India,” says Cleetus.

Thoothoor is a little over 40 kilometres from the Kerala capital, but 750 away from that of Tamil Nadu’s. Though Tamil is the official language, the devotional songs that blare out of loudspeakers in the town are in Malayalam. Ever since the Kanyakumari district merged with Tamil Nadu in 1956, people close to the border have lived a life of being neither here nor there.

In 2012, a team representing Kanyakumari district with 13 of its 16 members from Thoothoor lifted the inaugural Chief Minister’s Trophy bringing home a whopping `1 lakh per player. But that was one of the very rare instances when this community of fishermen got the dues they deserved.

Though three from Thoothoor — Reagan Albarnas, A Jacksan Dhas and S Shinu — were part of the Tamil Nadu Santosh Trophy squad earlier this year, they all made their names elsewhere before getting the call-up.

“These days, we only come to know of the district’s participation via WhatsApp when they crash out of some tournament,” says Vinod P who plays for Chennai’s Central Excise.

“It is not just official apathy. The urge to go out and prove themselves outside the village never occur to the footballers of Thoothoor. They were content to be heroes in their own land by playing the game amongst their people,” says Cleofas Alex, Tamil Nadu’s assistant coach and technical director of Little Flower Football Academy that scouts talent from the region.  

Fishermen of Thoothoor are always looking out for the strong winds and rough seas that batter the village often, washing away their houses and roads. But it is a welcome wind of change that is blowing along its idyllic shores these days, and it all started at one household opposite the St Catherine’s Ground in EP Thurai. 

The house remains shut these days because its inhabitants — four brothers — are elsewhere playing the beautiful game. Michael Soosairaj and Michael Regin are part of Chennai City FC in the I-League while former Tamil Nadu vice-captain Jegan — ‘Junior Jegan’ is how fans across the state know him — is with the Southern Railways. Robin is also a Chennai Senior Division footballer.

But, Soosairaj and Regin along with Antony Beautin from Poothurai and Tamil Nadu captain Reagan — all part of Chennai City — are inspiring youngsters even in their absence at the village. “They are showing our boys that if you dream big and take your chances, nothing is beyond us,” says Jegan.

Chennai City’s matches are now a festival of their own in the coastal belt. All the football grounds are turned into screening venues.

“Children, men and women all gather during these screenings. While we had screenings for the World Cups and Euros earlier, I-League and Indian Super League are equally popular,” says Milton. 

“Earlier we used to play on the beach. Now we have clay courts and boots. The situation is improving. But if we had one-third of the facilities that are available in cities like Chennai, we would have produced players of tremendous quality,” says Vinod. “We have more outstanding players like Soosairaj and Regin waiting to be discovered. But a lack of guidance is what hurts football in Thoothoor,” says Jegan.

One step in the right direction is the plan to start the Thoothoor Forane Football Academy (TFFA) at Erayumanthurai, thanks to efforts from a group of senior footballers and locals. “It is unbelievable that we have produced these many footballers without anyone getting any football education at all,” says Cleetus.

“With TFFA, I think the future of the village is in good hands. We have seen a lot of footballers join various departmental sides, universities and clubs in the recent years and I am confident in the near future, we will have many more young footballers from Thoothoor in the I-League and ISL,” Jegan says. 

The fishermen of Thoothoor are renowned shark hunters. Around 500 boats from the village sojourn waters close to Pakistan, Bangladesh, Maldives and Sri Lanka at any point in time. But the way things are going, it’s only a matter of time before the region is known for producing hunters of a different kind — of goals.

Know Thoothoor

■    Thoothoor forane consists of eight villages — Erayumanthurai, Poothurai, Chinnathurai, Thoothoor, Eravi Puthenthurai, Vallavilai, Marthandanthurai, and Neerodi — stretching over a distance of nine kilometres.

■    Seven of the eight parishes have a football club of their own. Eravi Puthenthurai, however, is the only village to have two clubs namely St Catherine’s Club and St Francis Animation and Social Centre (FASC).

■    Around 20 footballers from the region have gone on to play for department sides like  Indian Railways, ICF - Chennai, Chennai Nethaji Club, Indian Bank and Mumbai Hindustan Limited.

■    Thoothoor Forane Football Academy is the only academy to be established in the region and is set to begin functioning on September 27. TFFA will train 40 young Thoothoor footballers in the U-14 and U-16 categories.

■    Thoothoor has a total population of about 3 lakhs.

Colombia first to arrive

New Delhi: The first to land in India for the FIFA Under-17 World Cup, Colombia coach Orlando Restrepo exuded confidence that his boys will put up a good show. “The boys and the staff are all looking forward to the tournament.”

India squad announced

The 21-member final squad who will represent the country in the upcoming U-17 World Cup was announced in New Delhi on Wednesday.

India have been drawn in Group A alongside USA, Colombia and Ghana, and will face the USA on October 6. 

Goalkeepers: Dheeraj Singh, Prabhsukhan Gill, Sunny Dhaliwal.

Defenders: Boris Singh, Jitendra Singh, Anwar Ali, Sanjeev Stalin, Hendry Antonay, Namit Deshpande

Midfielders: Suresh Singh, Ninthoinganba Meetei, Amarjit Singh Kiyam, Abhijit Sarkar, Komal Thatal, Lalengmawia, Jeakson Singh, Nongdamba Naorem, Rahul Kannoly Praveen, Md. Shahjahan Forwards: Rahim Ali, Aniket Jadhav
 

adwaidh@newindianexpress.com