Campaign on ‘Children’s Right to Play’ launched in Odisha

Odisha Sun Times Sports Bureau
Bhubaneswar, Sept 14:

The campaign on ‘Children’s Right to Play’ was launched in Odisha with a seven-a-side exhibition football match, involving intellectually challenged and non-disabled youngsters here at Unit-VI Govt Boys’ High School ground in the city here today.

Bolangir beat Keonjhar by 2-0 goals.

Sumanta Sethia, who stole the show, scoring both the goals, was named player of the match.

Organised by Odisha Chapter of Special Olympics Bharat (SOB), in association with Unit-VI Athletic Association, the match generated lot of moral support for the new brand of football, which is dubbed as Unified Football.

SOB area director Prakash K Rath announced that efforts will be made to popularise unified football and children’s right to play campaign all over the state. “Similar matches will be conducted at different places. A panel of trainers will be formed to help children learn unified football,” he said.

According to Rath, six trainers have been selected, under the leadership of Trinath Samal to attend a training clinic, which will be conducted by coaches of English Premier League at Kolkata from November 23 to December 1.

The other five are Arpita Mohapatra, Umakant Sarangi, Sasmita Mohapatra, Suprava Das and Rameswar Parhi.

The unified football match was a part of the silver jubilee celebration of Kalinga Marine-Bibekananda Memorial (KMBM) Inter School Football Tournament, which will conclude with the final match between Kalinga Institute Social Sciences and Delhi Public School on Tuesday.

Another event of the day was an exhibition football match between Media XI and Veterans’ XI, which the latter won by 4-1 goals.

Former Santosh Trophy players P K Baliarsingh, Madhusudan Das, Pramod Rout and Pradip Das scored for the veterans, while Susant Mohanty reduced the margin for the media men.