Footballers to get feel of new turf

By Paritosh Pramanik

TOP flight football clubs of the city will get an opportunity to train on the lush green lawn 
turf of Bharatratna Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar Football Stadium prior to this season’s competition.
The Nagpur District Football Association (NDFA) is planning to allow only Elite and Super Division clubs to train at the new stadium to get the feel of the turf. 
With the sporting activities crawling back to normalcy after more than two months of lockdown which was imposed do break the chain of deadly coronavirus, footballers clubs will certainly begin their practice in coming days. 
There are 10 clubs that participate in Elite Division while 12 take part in Super Division.
Rahul Sankrutyayan Sports Association are the defending champions of the 2019 edition of the JSW Elite Division Football Championship. In the entertaining final, they had ousted reigning champions Young Muslim Football Club (YMFC) in sudden death (5-3) to wrest the title.
Though there is a big question mark over the start of competitions across all divisions, clubs might start their training during this monsoon season.
Talking to ‘The Hitavada’, NDFA President Haresh Vora said that they will readily allow clubs to train on the new turf.
“The Elite and Super Division Clubs will be permitted to train and play a couple of practice matches on the new lawn turf. It is necessary for them to get the feel of the newly laid lawn. This will also help them adjust to the ground conditions,” stated Vora.
The best thing is that NDFA won’t charge for practice from the clubs. “The ground is of players and clubs. We won’t charge a penny from the clubs,” stated Vora. The ground is ready for action and the work of erecting goalposts is remaining.
The washrooms and changing rooms are ready.
“In a day or two goalposts will be erected on the ground. Water connection to toilets and washrooms are completed,” said Vora. 
Though the Nagpur Civic authority has permitted outdoor exercise with social distancing and other guidelines, NDFA is yet to chalk out any such guidelines.
“We have not yet given any guidelines to clubs. We will be holding our executive meeting soon and then we will decide on forming any set of rules for players and clubs,” added Vora.
“We will be strictly asking every club to bring doctor’s certificate of each and every player before the match. This rule is very old but was not followed by the clubs. But after the coronavirus pandemic, we will be following this rule very strictly. No player will be allowed to play a match without doctor’s certificate,” he  asserted. “At present, work of clearing out the weeds from the ground is on full swing. In the first year we will have to take utmost care of the lawn as the unwanted weeds damages the lawn. From next year it would not trouble that much.” informed Vora.
As the maintenance cost would be high NDFA is also planning to rent out the ground to corporate houses for their ‘matches’.
“We will be requiring a lot of money to maintain this turf and also the entire stadium. We are planning to rent out the stadium to big corporate houses and in return request them to help us in maintaining the stadium,” 
said Vora. 
“If a corporate house helps us in constructing spectators gallery then we can allot them the ground for, say, one month in a year. Similar things can be worked out once we sit together with the interested parties,” Vora, who is also Vice-President of Western India Football Association, said.