Okerie ‘trick floors Churchill

In a lop-sided encounter, except for the initial 15 minutes, the Calcutta outfit thrashed the jaded looking Churchill Brothers scoring goals almost at will.

Poor defence and lack of finishing touch by the Goa team led to their downfall even as the most experienced players including Aqeel Ansari, skipper Mario Soares, Nigerian Emeka Oreka and Chibuzor remained off colour.

It was Basudev Mandal who opened the score for Bagan when his right footer shot home off a rebound from a defender’s leg after getting a lose ball from Abdul Khalique in the 36th minute.

Star forward, Okerie, then engineered a virtual coup scoring a hat-trick in quick succession and at ease mostly capitalising on poor marksmanship.His first goal, the second for his team, came when he dodged past a couple of players and shot in from close range (43rd min).

Within minutes of the breather, Okerie, continuing his scoring spree, received a lose ball from Mandal from top of the box to easily beat the goalkeeper Chandrakant Naik to make it 3-0.

Okerie completed his hat-trick snatching the ball from a defender and in a solo effort dodging past several players netted in (73rd min) to boost the score to four nil.

It was the turn for S Chatterjee when he beat the defenders and, finding the angle to the goal difficult, passed on to Khalique who committed no mistake in scoring the team’s fifth goal (75th min).

Okerie completed the rout making it six-nil when he snatched the ball from a defender and then punched from the right hand corner of the post at a difficult angle in the 38th minute.

Bagan now take on the winners of East Bengal and Mohammedan Sporting tie in the quarter final at Calcutta on July six.