Excerpt from the chapter Sevens Season 1990
Kairali Club increased the pace of the game in the second half, as Ibrahimkutty suggested, with the intent of wearing out the older AAA players. That simple change in strategy worked; the AAA players struggled to keep up, and the Kairali team began gaining the upper hand. With about ten minutes left in the match, Kairali Club equalized with a stunning shot to the far corner of the goal by Thomas, which Punnoose could do little to stop.
As usual, Punnoose pleaded and yelled at his teammates to score another goal. He was not confident of surviving a penalty shootout if he was pitted against Nixon, and more than his team’s defeat he feared the humiliation of a direct confrontation with him. Knowing Punnoose’s vulnerability well, Kairali Club players wanted to take the match to a penalty shootout and let Nixon face him directly, hoping to maximize their satisfaction from another win against a perennial rival.
The game went into extra time, and Kairali Club held on by playing defensively and keeping the ball in midfield as much as possible. Nixon was ecstatic when the referee blew the whistle ending extra time and pointed to the penalty spot to decide the fate of the game. Ibrahimkutty quickly warned him not to be overconfident, reminding him that he was up against some of the best players of the game and that relying on Punnoose’s weakness alone would not be enough.
Ibrahimkutty was correct to call out Nixon’s overconfidence and miscalculation in taking the AAA players lightly. At the start of the penalty shootout, AAA seemed to have the edge. Their veteran players had the skill to place their shots and score almost at will, and Nixon’s valiant efforts to stop them showed no success. Kairali Club also converted their first three kicks, though not effortlessly, as some nervousness had crept into their players.
Perhaps to rattle them further, Punnoose became boisterous and started hurling abuses while facing the kicks from Kairali Club players, but the referee and the organizers warned him that his team would be disqualified if he continued such behavior, and he complied grudgingly.
Nixon managed to almost deflect AAA’s fourth kick, but the ball still slipped past him into the goal. Both teams scored all five kicks in the first round, and the penalty shootout moved into a second round, with each team getting three more kicks. The spectators fell silent, as many of them thought Kairali Club’s defeat was inevitable. They had looked shaky in the shootout, unlike the promise they had shown during the second half of regular time and extra time. Yet the crowd desperately wanted AAA to lose and continued to root for Kairali Club.
The first kick of the second round was taken by AAA, and it was clear that their player was under pressure too, probably because he had been over-instructed by Punnoose. The kick was quick and placed wide, but Nixon luckily dived in the same direction, like a tall tree falling onto its side, and deflected the ball, which brushed the outer edge of the goal and went out. Navas took Kairali Club’s turn and converted it, though Punnoose tried everything he could to stop. Kairali Club led by one goal with two more kicks left for each team.
The second kick was converted by both teams, and Kairali Club kept their one-goal lead. AAA also converted their third kick, and to win the match Kairali Club had to convert their final kick to avoid a coin toss to determine the winner. Nixon prepared to take the decisive kick. Though the team still had some substitutes available, he did not want to leave anything to chance and took responsibility, as captain, for the most important kick of the match.
It was goalkeeper vs. goalkeeper at that moment, and Nixon had every reason in the universe to send that ball, sitting in front of him on the penalty spot, past Punnoose and straight into the goal without touching anything, to settle scores with a man who had been stripping away their joy of playing the Beautiful Game.