Charity match: A’ Level students play football for noble goal

Aman Jafri, a student at The Lyceum School, kills two birds with one stone by combining sports and charity.

KARACHI: Aman Jafri, a student at The Lyceum School, killed two birds with one stone with the simple yet effective idea of combining sports and charity. Luckily, his brother owned an event management company, which helped acquire sponsors and the stadium, and he knew friends all over the city who loved football, thereby guaranteeing a crowd.

“I just found a way to combine the two for a good cause,” he told The Express Tribune on Friday at Rahat Stadium where The Lyceum and Bay View High were paired off against Southshore and Nixor College in a match to raise flood relief funds for the interact club at the Rotary Foundation.

“I think the event was a success,” said Jafri. “I sold at least 400 tickets before the game and another 200 outside the gate.” With the tickets going for Rs200, he managed to raise Rs120,000.

While the main goal was to sell tickets to help flood survivors, the match also served another purpose, as, according to Jafri, last year a game between two of the schools had ended in a “huge fight”. Now they patched up and curious spectators packed the benches to watch them play.

The Lyceum/Bay View team went into the game confident and emerged as the victors. But Nixor/Southshore were equally determined to give the crowd a good show. Finally, the much-awaited whistle blew and the match was on. Nixor/SS dominated the first half of the game, passing and attacking aggressively. The hard work paid off in the 25th minute when Southshore forward Ehmed Khan tucked an elegant assist by Ahmed Ali Shah into the goal.

A few moments later the game was interrupted by a fully bearded man who stormed on to the pitch yelling about the resume of play during the Azaan. “You have to be shameless to play and shout during the Azaan!” He was escorted off the pitch and the referee blew the whistle for half time to calm things down. The second half started after a brief break for refreshments.

The Lyceum side then put up a tougher fight and threatened to level scores a few times but failed to find the net. The game ended with a 1-0 win for Nixor College/SouthShore. Lyceum defender Rehman Minhas felt that “team chemistry had been poor and Nixor had played extremely well”. “It was a tough game as we hadn’t practised with the Bay View team but it was all for a good cause,” he added with good humour.

Zaid Rahim, the captain of the winning team, said, “It felt great to win and even better to play for a good cause in front of such a huge crowd”. Fellow teammate Bilal Tabba added that, “It was an overall good team effort and a well organised event.”

The charity game was presented by StudioMaxx and was sponsored by Style360 and Subway.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 26^th, 2010.