2012 SAFF Women’s Championship reaches final stage

Hafiz Marikar

The second SAFF Women’s Championship is now on at Longdon Place, Colombo with eight teams participating. The tournament got off to a start on September 5 and will conclude on Sunday with the final being played under the distinguish patronage of the First Lady Shiranthi Rajapaksa who will be introduced to the teams and who will also present the Championship Trophy.

It’s appropriate to say a big thank you to Manilal Fernando, if not for whose initiative this tournament would not have come to Sri Lanka. When the organizers were hunting for sponsors, to host this event, he volunteered to sponsor the tournament through his company “Holcim”. He has also invited the FIFA representative Sonia Haziraj the match commissioner Mindu Dorji and the match officials from Myanmar, India and Nepal.

Asian Football Federation (SAFF) was formed in 1997 in association with football playing nations in South Asia. Its founding members were Bangladesh, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.

Bhutan joined the federation in 2000 and Afghanistan in 2005. The idea was to give a flip to the game in South Asia for both men and women.

Manilal Fernando who got this tournament to Sri Lanka, said that in 2010 the SAFF Women's Championship was introduced and called the South Asian Football Federation Women's Cup. It is the main association for football with competitions for Women.

Manilal said that he was very happy the way the tournament has been conducted and thanked FFSL CEO Chrysantha Perera and his able team for a good job done.

This year's participating teams are defending champions India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Bhutan in group “A” with Nepal, Pakistan, Maldives and Afghanistan in Group “B”.

Today is a rest day for the tournament, and the Managers of a

ll participating teams will be meeting for a discussion. Friday will see the semifinals - the first at 8.30 a.m. and the 2nd at 3.30 p.m. at Longden Place. On Sunday at 3.30 p.m. will be the grand final.

Women’s football is steeped in history and has gained a huge popularity in the last two decades of the 20th century.

Let's take a look at the history of women's soccer and find out where and when it was born as well as meeting some of the legendary ladies.

The first written document relating to the history of football can be found in a 300 BC Chinese war manual, used by men to familiarize themselves with their ancient version of the sport, which included kicking a ball (made out of pig bladders or stuffed leather) through a hole in a cloth tied up between two poles.

Although there's no proof that women played this sport as well, there is a clear reference to this that is often used as the start-point of the history of women's football.

The reference is depicted in a Han Dynasty fresco believed to be created around 200 CE, which clearly shows two female figures playing with what is believed to be a leather ball.

Reports of women playing football during the Middle Ages are not as common as those referring to men.

However there are a few famous examples in the history of women's football French women of the 12th century are believed to having played kicking games relating to football side by side with their husbands and Scottish women even had an annual competition going around in Mid-Lothian, Scotland.