He is also something of an anomaly in the tournament as he is not a teacher at the school like every other team in the competition, just a parent as passionate about the beautiful game as his players.
It is clear the popularity enjoyed by the NSL competition continues to rise in the early weeks of the second installment – so it is somewhat surprising to discover Fujairah-based St Mary’s Under-16s are competing without the total support of the school.
The school sent a sports teacher to supervise the team on the opening day of the Fujairah group stages at Fujairah Football Club on Saturday, but hard-working D’Souza is solely in charge of the team.
nationalities which we put together a team with.
“We wanted to put together an Under-14 team too but I couldn’t manage both, so we made sure we had at least one team. “At first I made sure they got registered and the boys come out on their own to training. They said they wanted me to coach them, so I agreed to do that.” Throughout the early stages of the season, there have been a few isolated cases of teams unable to fill their eight-player rosters on certain weekends due to player shortages, but D’Souza admits attendance won’t be a problem for St Mary’s, with numbers thriving. “I called all the boys and asked them who would want to join,” said D’Souza. “The maximum I can take is 15 boys. We registered 12 but I have three reserves and 22 boys wanted to be on the team altogether, so seven can’t even play. “I wanted to give everyone a chance to represent the school. Teams sometime struggle but you have 22 here, we have a coach but the school is not supporting us.” St Mary’s U-16s performed well on their debut in the competition last year, winning three of their six group games and narrowly missing out on a trip to the knockout stages. They also began brightly on Saturday, beating the Institute Of Applied Technology 2-1 thanks to goals from Oladimeji Adeyemo and D’Souza’s 15-year-old son Dwayne, who was second top scorer in the Sharjah and Northern Emirates group stages last year. They also registered a 1-1 draw against Indian School Fujairah thanks to Adeyemo’s strike and D’Souza wants the team to go a step further this year by reaching the last 16 in Dubai. “We’re looking to top the group and qualify for the knockout stages,” said D’Souza. “We have a game plan and we’ve seen the other teams play, we know what their strengths are and the boys know what they need to do. “We will have at least three training sessions before next Saturday and two more matches against Fujairah Private Academy and Our Own English High School. “We look forward to winning the games and topping the group.”
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