Come the 20th and 21st of August, the rooftop facility, Game on (Egmore, Chennai) will be filled with the sounds of rippling nets, crunching tackles and shouts of glory. Under lights, in the closed confines of an enclosed football arena, the great will distinguish themselves from the rest.
The Arsenal Chennai Supporters Club (ACSC) is back with its yearly five-a-side tournament, ‘The Cannon Cup’ and this year it promises to be better than ever before.
The Cannon cup was conceptualised in 2014, as a medium to promote high-quality five-a-side football in Chennai. The rarity of high calibre football tournaments in the city ensured that the first edition was a great success. Jeppiar football club emerged victorious from the 32 participating teams.
The second edition was expanded to 48 teams and the tournament itself was conducted over two days. Chennai city FC, now of the senior division emerged the winners.
Come 2016, the event promises to be an even grander success because of the host of changes and improvements made. Game on; a specialised, enclosed, floodlit rooftop facility will host the matches, now restricted to 32 five-a-side teams.
In addition, the ACSC has introduced Tamil Nadu’s first open women’s futsal tournament under the Cannon Cup banner. 12 women’s teams will fight it out for the considerable prizes on offer not to mention the bragging rights. This move has been made to promote the growth of women’s football in the state.
The winners of the men’s tourney will receive Rs.15,000 plus gift hampers for every winning team member, not to mention the medals and the winner’s trophy. The runners up will receive Rs.10,000 and a trophy. Each of the 55 games in the men’s event will have a Man of the Match who will get a gift hamper sponsored by Sportsnut.
There will be 4 individual overall awards in the men’s event - Golden Ball, Golden Glove, Golden Boot and Goal of the Tournament. Each of these players will get a gift hamper sponsored by Cloudclothing - a unit of MVB TRADERS.
The women’s tournament will see 15 games altogether and all games will have a Woman of the Match award for which gift hampers will be given. Winners of the women’s event will get Rs. 6,000 plus gift hampers and medals with a trophy. Runners up will get Rs. 4,000 plus medals and trophy. Woman of the match award is sponsored by Bodynomics.
The Arsenal Chennai Supporter club was started in March 2012 with the mission of being the Arsenal FC recognised supporters club for Chennai Gooners.
In their four years of existence, they have held cleaning campaigns, charity activities and sponsored underprivileged footballers. They routinely screen all Arsenal matches for the fans and turn up in huge numbers for ISL matches in Chennai to show support for ex- Gunners like Robert Pires, Freddie Ljungberg, Andre Santos and Mikael Silvestre. The official recognition they received in 2016 was a testament to the work they’ve done.
Tournament details:
Dates: August 20 and 21, 2016
Location: GAME ON, Sulaiman Zachariah Avenue, Pantheon Road, Egmore
Timings: Matches will be taking place from 8-12 both days (Saturday and Sunday)
