To commemorate Jaipal Singh Munda’s birth anniversary, a friendly match was held between the Bariatu Girls Hockey Centre and Jharkhand 11 teams at the Astroturf Hockey Stadium in Morhabadi today wherein Hockey Olmpians Manohar Topno and Silvanus Dungdung were seen to be motivating the young players. The 61st National School Games Federation of India (SGFI) Hockey Games 2015-16 is all set to open from tomorrow with 15 matches scheduled to be played by 23 states of India on the opening day itself.
Both the teams were handed a hockey kit and bags after the match by the District Sports Officer Amitabh Kumar soon after the match that ended as a draw with score of 3-3. The opening day will witness an early morning match at Ground 1 between Jharkhand and Tamil Nadu boys U-14 at 8 a.m.
It’s not a common sight to spot a pair of Olympians drop by at the Morhabadi Stadium to coach the youth here. Dozens of young boys and girls in the U- 14 team have been accommodated at the field hockey youth camp that has been set up at the hockey stadium’s first floor for the girls team and at the Birsa Munda Football stadium. The youth participants are being given a little extra motivation for participation and better performance in the four day event.
Former field hockey players Sylvanus Dung Dung and Manohar Topno were both on the 1980 and 1984 Olympics team representing India for the field hockey team (men) from Jharkhand and now here at the event to promote the game to a younger generation of girls and boys in picking up the stick.
Born and brought up in a small village of then Gumla, Topno grew up playing the stick and ran around in the farm fields with his father and brothers from an early age of 10. He first represented India at the First Asia Cup in Karachi, Pakistan in 1982 under the captainship of Zafar Iqbal. That was his first international match and soon after he kept representing the country at various tournaments in Holand, Pakistan and Bangladesh. The team India secured the fifth position in Olympics that was held in los Angeles in the United States of America in the year 1984 and the year after proved to be a big turning point in his life.
Topno suffered a leg injury while playing the stick at the Second Asia Cup in Dhaka a year later and thereafter had to discontinue playing the sport. With no government aid and lack of proper timely treatment, led to the aggravation of the injury and took away the precious years of his hockey career. “The hockey stick is the only thing I grew up with. We were so poor; we could not afford full meals or fancy toys but just make our own sticks from the wood cut from the forests nearby our village and keep practicing in the fields. The injury really hurt me and broke my morale but after a good break of about seven years, I started coaching younger boys and girls in my village and now I coach U-14 and U-21 teams from the state and this keeps me happy,” said Manohar.
Currently, he coaches a team of 25 students of government-run SS High School in Khunti, which is the same school that he went to as a child. Both his sons have taken up the sport after him and the elder son Shashi Topno had played international matches too, while his daughters prefers to study well and become doctors.
