Tigers Sporting Club Indoor Soccer Tournament A Success!
There were six teams who participated in this tournament, two of which comprised entirely with people from the Bangladeshi community. There were also a healthy number of Bangladeshis in the other teams that participated in the event. The tournament was witnessed by a good number of people who took time off from their busy Saturday mornings to watch the exhilarating and fast paced nature of indoor soccer. This represents well for the Bangladeshi community in Canberra as it is a reflection of the fact that a large number of Bangladeshis in the ACT are keen sports-lovers and sports followers. The event was witnessed by Lt. General Masud, the honorary High Commissioner of Bangladesh to Australia as the special guest and also presented the winners with their trophies.
Teams in Action
The tournament spanned for four hours where six teams were divided in two groups.
Group A consisted of: IPDC (captained by Rafiqul Sharif Joseph)
‘The Noble Team (captained by Mohammed Alim Rahul),
International Business Machines (captained by Shannon Frick)
Internationals FC (captained by Saadman Huq).
Group B consisted of:
Scullin Strikers (captained by Toffazzal Galib),
Tigers Sporting Club (captained by Nabil Hossain).
Participating Teams
Group A was a closely contested group where all three teams finished on equal points but Internationals FC and The Noble Team went through to the semi-finals on superior goal advantage. IPDC and Tigers Sporting Club reached the semis from Group B.
The semi-finals provided great spectacle for the crowd as they were very closely contested and eventually Internationals FC and The Noble Team qualified to the final beating Tigers Sporting Club and IPDC respectively. The final match was also a great contest with Internationals FC coming out as champions winning by six goals to two scored by The Noble Team. Although the result may suggest a one-sided affair but the teams were evenly matched in terms of their quality and the level of skill on display was high-class.
At the conclusion of the tournament, Saffat Hossain (daughter of Mr Afzal Hossain, a senior and well-respected member of the Bangladeshi community and popular PriyoAustralia writer, who was also present as a spectator) hosted the presentation ceremony. The players of the winning team and the runner-up team were presented with trophies by Lt. General Masud, the honorary High Commissioner of Bangladesh. He also presented a speech where he urged everyone especially people in the Bangladeshi community to get actively involved in sports. He mentioned that as a keen sports-lover himself, he believes that it provides means for people to remain fit as well as have a lot of fun in the process. It also provides recreational opportunity for the younger generation which would prevent them from getting distracted into any wrong-doings. In addition, Mr Masud congratulated the committee members of the Tigers Club for taking the initiative to organise such an event and expressed the necessity of such events being hosted in the small but active Bangladeshi community in Canberra.
Lt Gen Masud Honorary Bangladesh High commissioner during his speech
The president of the Tigers Club, Ehsan Karim who also spoke on the occasion, thanked all the teams and spectators who were present at the tournament as it shows great interest in sports amongst people especially from the Bangladeshi Community. He gave a short background on how the Tigers Club came about and of the various hardships and challenges they had to endure to come where they are today. He expressed the desire of the club’s committee members to grow the club further in the future with everyone’s support, and fulfil the club’s ambition of bringing together sports-lovers of various communities, especially the Bangladeshi community by providing them with an opportunity to play a sport they love. He mentioned that the intention of the club, at its purest, is to provide people with an opportunity to have formalised fun by playing sports without having to worry about how or when. He thanked the committee members Asif Hossain, Saiful Islam, H M Nafees, Nabil Hossain and Tapa Islam who put in a lot of hard work to organise this event and continues to play a great role in the management of the club. Ehsan disclosed the next project for Tigers Club will be to organise a badminton tournament after Ramadan, whilst also taking part in the ACT Sunday Social Cricket league for the fourth time. The Tigers Sporting Club reached the semi-finals of the competition and hopes to better that in the current season. He concluded by thanking everyone once again and reminding them that,
‘whoever we are and wherever we are, there is always room for sports, after all, who would we all be without it’.
