The 4th Mokokchung Inter-Ward Football Tournament is scheduled to begin from Monday, 10 April with at least 13 Ward teams participating at the Imkongmeren Sports Complex.
The annual tournament is being organized by Marepkong Youth Association (MYA) with this year’s theme being “Towards Excellence.”
Started in the year 2019, the MYA have been successfully organizing the tournament consecutively, barring 2020 due to the pandemic, with the purpose of promoting local talents.
Speaking to Mokokchung Times, Talinungsang Longkumer, Convener of the Media and Publicity Committee said, “Mokokchung in days gone by was known to take the limelight when it comes to football in the state, but in past few years it has shown a steep decline in the sport.”
“The tournament is a promotional event with the sole purpose of promoting local talents of Mokokchung Town,” he said.
In line with their objective, the organizers have made it mandatory for every participating team to include at least 3 players who are 17 years of age or below in their lineup.
Addressing the lack of participation by 5 of the 18 wards in the tournament this year, Longkumer said, “In what I can only assume, it might be due to the lack of players.”
“The hiring or addition of players from other areas apart from the participating wards is strictly prohibited unlike other tournaments,” he informed.
“With many discrepancies or malpractices in the past years where players were hired by teams in order to win, which limits the opportunities for enthusiasts, the organizers have come up with a screening process wherein the list of all the players from the participating teams are given out to all the participating teams in advance from which the opposing teams can scrutinize the list of their opponents and report to the organizers in case of any irregularities,” he revealed.
Talking about the condition of the pitch, Longkumer said, “The authorities in the town have shown very little interest in sports. So there are many issues on the ground that need to be addressed.”
“Even though it is called a sports complex, the ground is used for a myriad of purposes. Even in the recently concluded elections, all the requisitioned vehicles were dispatched from the ground which has damaged the pitch.”
“We have, to the best of our abilities, tried leveling the pitch till Saturday,” he said.
While encouraging the public to come watch the matches and appealing for the people’s support, he said that the tickets for the matches will be sold at a nominal price.
He also revealed that half of the proceeds from the ticket sales will be equally divided among the participating teams apart from the winners and the runner ups as they will be awarded cash prizes of Rs 50,000 and Rs 30,000 respectively. This, according to him, is unprecedented in the area.
Four individual prizes will also be awarded this year, namely Best goalkeeper; Best Defender; Highest Scorer; and Player of the Tournament.
Each individual achiever will be awarded a cash prize as well as individual gift hampers which is sponsored by the brand ‘Purity’.
Reveling what motivates them to organize the tournament, he said, “With this tournament the unity among the 18 wards of our town is evident; the rest of the 17 wards have shown much appreciation to our ward for providing the platform and to promote our local talents which encourages us,” he concluded.
The inaugural program for the 4th Mokokchung Inter-Ward Football will start at 11 am on Monday with Dr. Sentitula, IFS Divisional Forest Officer, Mokokchung as Guest of Honor.
Arkong Ward won the inaugural tournament in 2019 while Artang Ward and Mongsenbai Ward won in 2021 and 2022 respectively.
- The teams will be divided into 4 pools where the Winner and the 2nd best team of each pool get to qualify for the next round.
- A Yellow card will incur a monetary penalty of Rs.100 and a Red card will incur a monetary penalty of Rs.300.
- Yellow cards in consecutive matches irrespective of tournament stage will incur one match suspension.
- Red card will incur a minimum of one match suspension.
Mokokchung Times
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