How football raises the game for girls in villages of Kanniyakumari district Premium

While the villages had seen many successful women footballers in the past, the tradition died in the early 1980s with the closure of the KRYC Football Club. An attempt to bring football back to the lives of women in Thoothoor since 2022 has made all the difference

After Sunday Mass, a little after the noon sun peaks at Thoothoor, seven girls, in the age group of 13 to 17, make their way to one of the small beaches that stud the Kanniyakumari coast. Minutes after they step on the sand, they see young boys kicking a football around. Their net is hastily thrown together with some stumps of wood and a makeshift fishing net. The girls gain control over the ball. “Nidhi is our striker. She is a great shot. Just watch,” says M. Sasha, her teammate, who belongs to Thoothoor’s Netaji Sports Academy.

Nidhi stylishly kicks the ball across the fishing net, looking to her coach John Britto, president of Nethaji Library and Sports Club, for approval. They give the football back to the boys and gather by the waves. Over the next half-an-hour, they discuss potential careers in football, the gains they have made since they first began training a year ago, and their love for the sea.

Nidhi and her six other friends are among the first batch of young women footballers who are looking to revive the sport in their villages since the 1970s. Villages like Chinnathurai, EP Thurai and Neerodi along the same belt have also now begun steadily contributing players to local school and college teams, playing exhibition matches and small non-competitive tournaments called ‘friendlies’. Though these villages along the west Kanniyakumari coast have seen many successful women footballers in the past, the tradition, they say, died in the early 1980s with the closure of the KRYC Football Club, the first football club of Thoothoor. An attempt to bring football back to the lives of women in Thoothoor since 2022 has made all the difference.

And if you wondered from where they imbibed this extraordinary love for football, they are not far from Kerala where football is elevated to the foremost pantheon. Thoothoor and seven adjacent hamlets along the coast — Erayumanthurai, Poothurai, Chinnathurai, Eraviputhenthurai (EP Thurai), Vallavilai, Marthandanthurai, and Neerodi — are only minutes from Kerala. Nearly every one in the village has probably played some football at some point in life.

Besides deep-sea fishing, these villages have been popular in the football circuit for providing quality players to the Tamil Nadu Santosh Trophy team and popular leagues, including the Indian Super League (ISL) and the I- League. In the past two years, several local league teams have come to the village, scouting for talent. The village had a thriving women’s football team called the KRYC Women’s Football Team in the 1970s which often competed with teams in Kerala. However, it fizzled out with time as interest and competition waned. W. Joobo Mary, a 62-year-old retired teacher from Thoothoor, who was one of the members of the KRYC women’s team in 1974, says they often trained in the beach sand as proper grounds were not available.

They began training as early as 5 a.m. before heading to school, played against the boys team and often took part in ticketed ‘nines’ tournaments against their contemporaries from nearby villages in Kerala. Although it is popularly believed that the craze for football in the seven villages came from the neighbouring State, residents of Thoothoor and its nearby villages say they are unsure about when exactly football entered their lives. “Everyone has kicked a football around for as long as the oldest person here can remember. The idea of a women’s team was not a genius move. It simply came from the question ‘why not?’,” says coach Britto.

J. Hethersha, a student of Class 12, who is part of the academy in Thoothoor, says that after about 50 years, they are the first among the women of the village to begin kicking a football again. The routine that the women of the 1970s followed continues to be emulated. “The pandemic was especially tough for young women in the village as they were confined to their homes. The men ended up playing on the streets and going fishing but the young women had no respite. That is when we saw some women organically playing football on the streets. When we decided to offer them coaching, at least 20 people signed up. Now, between 12 and 15 people come in for practice,” says coach Britto.