For the love of football, and coaching

Ravi Dhaliwal

Tribune News Service

Kala Afghana (Gurdaspur), June 28

There are innumerable cities which have a legacy of producing top drawer sportspersons but in Gurdaspur district, there is a village that has earned the sobriquet of a ‘village of coaches’ for having produced football instructors with monotonous regularity.

Kala Afghana, a non-descript hamlet on the Batala-Fatehgarh Churian road, is home to as many as 12 NIS qualified coaches. A ‘Diploma in Sports Coaching’ from NIS, Patiala, is mandatory for getting the job of a coach.

Locals now refer to the village as ‘coachan da pind’ (village of coaches).

It all started when Punjabi University football coach Dalbir Singh Randhawa, egged on by his brother and athletics trainer Jasbir Singh Mauji, decided to do away with his playing shirt and instead opt to undergo the NIS diploma course. Once through with the 10-month course, Randhawa landed the job of a coach. This was enough to ignite a spark among the village youth who took to the sport like moths to a flame.

After Randhawa’s baptism, the village went on to produce an astonishing 11 more coaches. Ten of these coaches are employed with the Army, BSF, RCF Kapurthala, Punjab Sports Department, Punjabi University and the Punjab Education Department. 

They include Gurjap Singh and Rakesh Kumar (Education Department), Bikramjit Singh and Sukhraj Singh (RCF), Harinder Singh, Samuel Masih and Hardev Singh (Sports Department), Prabhjot Singh and Dalbir Singh Randhawa (Punjabi University) and Kashmir Singh (Army).

Mukhwinder Singh Randhawa and Rajbir Singh are imparting the nuances of the game at private institutions.

“All these trainers have earned their spurs while playing and practising at the village’s senior secondary school. Reason enough why a majority of them have now decided to suffix the name of their village with their names,” says Dalbir Singh Randhawa ‘Kala Afghana’.