Cathedral & John Connon (Fort) will battle Bombay Scottish (Mahim) in the boys U-16 final of the Ahmed Sailor MSSA inter-school football tournament after they charted out contrasting routes in their respective semi-final matches at the St Francis D’Assisi ground, Borivli on Thursday.
In the first semi-final, Cathedral withstood a strong second half comeback from Chatrabhuj Narsee School (CNS, Kandivli) before beating them 5-4 via via tie-breaker after the scores were locked 1-1 at the end of regulation time.
Cathedral went into the lead in the third minute through Veer Kedia, who neatly finished past the advanced CNS custodian following a neat fine pass by skipper Rian Uniyal.
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However, CNS regrouped and fought back gamely to restore parity deservingly in the second half through Riddhiman Singh. Rian once again turned out to be the chief architect of Cathedral’s triumph by converting a penalty and also making two crucial saves in the tie-breaker, where he replaced their original first choice goalkeeper.
Apart from Rian, the other scorers for Cathedral were Rayess Surti, Akshaj Singh and Aditya Desai, while CNS netted through Samit Mandhare, Anirvinya Sarkar
and Riddhiman Singh.
In the second semi-final, Bombay Scottish cruised to a 4-1 win over St Joseph’s Secondary (Orlem). St Joseph’s went into the lead through Jesse Bhobe in sixth minute lead but thereafter it was all Scottish underlined their class as wingers Reuben Thomas and Hriday Haria struck a brace each to complete the win.
