Sporting phenomenon II

live sporting can turn into an addiction!
now that the season's over, life feels kinda empty.

here's how i covered my first assignment as a sports journalist for the
AFC youth championship at shree kanteerva stadium.

Not being on a regular (forget regular, not any) payroll of a media organisation is a pain, especially when you wanna get entry to such events.
But finding ways to work around it is fun too!
step 1
sneak into the media gallery (through the VIP entrance) unnoticed, if u happened to be perticularly attractive as moi, then this step is obsolete, then you move on to..
step 2
explain the hierarchy of officials you get referred to, what a 'student journalist' is... give up and finally retort to be invisible to the match officials (again futile as step 1)
if this doesnt work as well then,
step3
use your contacts ,if you're smart enough this would be your first step.
and if you're really lucky...
step 4
The media chairman one day walks up and says
(oh no, this is the end) "tomorrow you come and collect the media pass, dont forget your photograph!"
YAY
is this for real.... and find yourself...

sitting on the media gallery, and reporting live is something i could sure get used to!
we'd discuss the intricasies and nuances of the game (i'd mostly listen) swap juicy tid-bits on Dasmunshi's life (most journos hate him)
there was a regular supply of refreshments (cold samosa and soggy sandwiches), which the japanese seemed to love (including the mutated version of kaju barfi!)

The sports journos....wow, most of them were players themselves (even if it was at school level),or coaches and referees.
Personifed giant sports encyclopedia, rattling out statistics and profiles making me feel like a pathetic dumb school girl!

The best part were the post match press conferences, the battle of the journos began, the foriegn coaches and players would pretend not to understand the language to evade inconvenient questions.
In a matter of weeks i knew more about football then i had in all twenty one years of life

More then that, i found a career!
like the game of football, come rain, come sunshine, there aint a moment of dullness.
So much for hating something! now its a passion.
life's so unpredictable,you never know where it takes you.
Well, this time around it took me right to the football pitch.