It seems that Alvito D'Cunha, one of the dashing forwards for East Bengal today, was one among a group of Sesa Goa players who ditched the club midway in the Second Division league and came back to Goa from Bangalore during the players transfers period. Shorn of its cream players, the team was left high and dry without any strength, nullifying it chances of qualifying for the Big League. Peter Lima Leitao, who was the corporate manager for the team, is on record saying that if Sesa Goa had qualified for the National League, then perhaps the decision to disband the team would have been put off. Of course, it was not all hunky dory for me on the Sportswatch desk. Neither could I boast that I had become a full-fledged writer with hardly two years of experience. When Brahmanand Shankhwalkar won the Arjuna Award, Choppy asked to me to go to Fatorda for a profile of this great football player. But I almost chickened out as I did not have the guts to meet such a famous personality like Brahmanand. Help came in the form of Ashley do Rosario, into his second innings in Herald by then, who offered to accompany me. In Fatorda, I found out that some great people like Brahmanand, who win laurels for the country and win accolades for themselves, have no airs about themselves. This Arjuna awardee was just an ordinary person who performed extraordinarily. Sheer grit, determination, hard work and humbleness were his only tools of success. My passion for all things football sometimes landed me in trouble too. Officially, my job at the Herald, by this time, was being part of the Goa desk. On a few occasions, the news editor and the editor discovered that I was going all the way to Fatorda, 40 Kms from Panjim, to watch the National Football League. Soon enough, I got a 'goonish absurdism' from the editor asking why action should not be taken against Mr Visvas Paul for 'subsidising' work. There were two or three points with which I was accused, one among those was that I had defied the News Editor Sergio Caldeira. I denied everything in a written reply. What they did not reckon was that I would sincerely came back from the football match, and complete my day's work, which was doing the Goa page. But seniors later did not have any qualms about accompanying Choppy and me for an important match during working hours. What's more, after coming back from the match, he even helped me complete the page! Doing a Goa page was the dreariest thing on the desk, because, of the kind of stories that landed in from the correspondents.