Chapter 22

of the Government of Goa.

This enthusiasm was carried forward by leaps and bounds, making Goa one of the most feared of states in the country, throwing up players of repute. Both the clubs and the Goa teams, won tournaments all over the country, with professionalism coming in. No less credit to the founder members of the newly constituted Goa Football Association, which was created after disbanding the erstwhile Association that existed before Liberation and 1961.

Of particular note was the staging of a football match, featuring a team of women, during the Carnival season, on March 4, 1973, at the Police ground in Panaji, between Eves and Adams. This was organised by us members of the Clube Vasco da Gama, and I will stick out my neck to say that it was the first time a match was played with a women's team. Unless, somebody can prove to the contrary.

Athletics: This universally acclaimed discipline as the 'mother of all games and sports', did not progress as desired. On August 1, 1969, Prabhakar Sinari, Francisco Braganza, Rui Carvalho, Domnic Fernandes and myself, got together and formed the Goa Amateur Athletic Association, which functions till today, though with mixed results.

We did win plenty of medals at the National level, but nothing at the international level. Among the main drawbacks were, and still are, finance, lack of infrastructural facilities, including grounds and a suitable running track and of course trained officials. The situation today is much improved, with the government providing coaching facilities and other incentives, especially at the school and college level.

Yet, apart from football, athletics, swimming and taekwondo, which have brought a lot of honours to the state in the past few years, there is little to shout about in the other disciplines. There are a lot of pontification made by the governments, often with political considerations, and these have not been good for the progress of sporting activity in Goa.

As for me, my stint in Goa has been rewarding. Being bestowed with the prestigious and highest state award, the Jivbadada Kerkar Award for Best Organiser for the year 1984-85. Reporting two Olympic Games, at Montreal and Los Angeles, the World Cup hockey at Sydney, the World Amateur Boxing Championships in Bombay, where I also shared the mike for the English commentary, the Asian Games, Permit meets and Nationals in the country, in the capacity of an official, have all been a great experience, besides allowing me the opportunity to globe trot.

One also produced and edited Goa's first sports weekly titled Goal, in 1976-77, and later in 1996, I edited the bilingual fortnightly Konkan Mail, both having to be discontinued due to lack of support.

There were different reasons and circumstances for the starting of these two publications. I had been working as a correspondent for Sportsweek of Bombay, and the idea of starting the Goal came from there.

With sports picking up, one felt there was scope for a weekly focussing mainly on local sports affairs. I was aware that in a venture of this type, I would be requiring a lot of money, which I did not have. But what weighed in my favour was the fact that in partnership with a friend of mine, we had taken the Diario da Noite press, owned by Luis de Menezes, on a contract basis, to print a full-fledged paper the Goa Monitor, owned by Erasmo Sequeira in 1977, under the name of Polygot Publication, Campal.

The Goal, therefore, could be a by-product, as the infrastructure for producing it, including the printing staff, was in place. The only cost involved would be the news-print for the tabloid. As for the writing part, I was going to do most of it, while a few friends of mine promised to write gratis. Unfortunately for us, the Goa Monitor was forced to fold up, as Sequeira's press staff went on strike. It also meant the premature death of "Goal", on which one had pinned high hopes, as it was steadily picking up in sales and, surprisingly, even getting a few advertisements from big industrial houses.

In the case of Konkan Mail, the whole concept was born out of a missionary zeal.

When I approached Mathias Vaz, owner of the Maureen Printing Press, and P.M. Vaz, proprietor of Manvins Courier Service and Manvins Hotel, with the idea of bringing out a bilingual paper, which would contain news catering to both English-language and Roman Konkani readers, they immediately agreed.

Papers which published general news in Konkani, were in Devnagri script, which many of the Catholics, specially those in the 30+ age group, could simply not read. It was for this section that the Konkan Mail would cater to. While Mathias handled the entire printing, P.M.Vaz would take care of the distribution and couriering part, besides providing office space and the use of his computers in his hotel, while I would handle the editing.

The soft launch of the first copy of 18 pages, costing Rs. 2, was done by the Member of Parliament Eduardo Faleiro, in the city, where a few prominent citizens were the invitees.

For the nearly four years the paper was regularly published, there was great enthusiasm shown by the readers. But this in itself is not enough for the success of a paper, as any publisher will vouch, without advertisements, which is the main revenue provider. And that is exactly what we lacked. This could be because of a variety of factors, including perhaps, bad management. After several appeals to the readers via the editorials for such revenue support bore no results, we decided to suspend publication, as we could no longer continue suffering losses. We still hope to restart, provided the finance is available; but for the moment we haven't a clue of where this money is going to come from.

Though sports has been my first love, reporting on sports has been an add on. Except for a brief stint on the sports desk of the Free Press Journal, my main grounding on the news and reporting desk was with the Times of India, Bombay, and then on The Navhind Times and back to the Goa page of the Times of India, Bangalore edition, as a stringer, where I also did a lot of sports reporting. I believe that sports journalism helps a lot in the shaping of a good all-round writer, simply because it gives one a free reign to use descriptive language and a variety of verbiage, ordinarily not suited for general reporting.

Be that as it may, I was fortunate enough to work as a correspondent for many publications. Of particular mention was the Indian Post, run by the Singhanias in Bombay and edited by that time by S. Nihal Singh. The paper was to run into trouble later on and later had to close down. By this time, Vinod Mehta had taken charge as the Editor, and subsequently quit, to start The Independent, belonging to the Times of India group. Many of us with the Indian Post joined the editorial team under his leadership in 1989. Incidentally, the Executive Editor, Dina Vakil, who left The Independent to join the Times of India, thanked me in a letter dated May 4, 1990 for my support to the newspaper. I have my utmost regard for all these three, Nihal Singh, Vinod Mehta and Dina Vakil, for their personal gestures.

Among the other major papers where I served as correspondent, were the Financial Express for nine years, the Afternoon, the Tribuna of then Portuguese Macau, a news agency from Lisbon Noticias de Portugal and the NCWC News Service, Massachusetts, USA. It was hard work, and when I look back at those times, I am amazed how I was able to keep to my schedules and enjoy doing it.

Such challenges apart, it has been a great party always and I had a wow of a time.