Cambridge coach slams DSO for wrong scheduling after defeat

Cambridge coach Siddhesh Shinde. Pic/Atul Kamble

Cambridge School (Kandivli) coach Siddhesh Shinde lashed out at the functioning of District Sports Office (DSO) after his team's 1-5 defeat to St Andrew's Jr College (Bandra) in the boys U-17 Subroto Cup semi-final at St Francis D'Assisi ground in Borivli yesterday.

Cambridge were scheduled to play the first semi-final against St Andrew's at 9am. Due to an error in the fixtures list on the DSO's website, which showed St Andrew's match scheduled at 10am against Thakur Jr College, the Bandra team arrived at the ground at 9.20am, delaying the first semis by half an hour. Though the DSO coordinator Babu Joseph had informed the Bandra side about the revised timing (9am), Andrew's followed the fixtures listed on the website.

Negative effect
"We were informed by Babu sir that our match is at 9am. So my boys reached the venue at 8am. As the opposition team came late, it hampered our match preparation and performance. Either DSO should have rescheduled the tie or given us a walkover. They should learn to respect time," Cambridge coach Shinde told mid-day.

Meanwhile, St Andrew's coach Nishad Mandalkar said: "We went by the fixtures that were put up on the DSO website. They had informed us verbally about the semis, but we forgot and went by the time mentioned on the website."

'Not deliberate'
DSO official Sanjog Dhole said they did not realise the error until the match was over. "We had made changes in the football fixtures during the quarter-finals to accommodate St Andrew's request and we put up the old fixtures on the website unknowingly," said Dhole.

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