Manorama Club Award: Challengers Club, the pride of Edathanattukara

Challengers Club, Edathanattukara
Although Challengers Club was founded in 1970, Edathanattukara had been a beehive of soccer activities much before that. Photo: Manorama

Edathanattukara and its Challengers Football Club, one of the six finalists of the Manorama Club Award 2020-21, hold a unique place in Kerala's football history. Football is intertwined with the fabric of their lives than any other sports. Here, men and women, young and old, never get tired of discussing the game. There is at least one footballer in every household in this serene hilly hamlet in Palakkad district. 

Although Challengers Club was founded in 1970, Edathanattukara had been a beehive of soccer activities much before that. Like in many other villages in north Malabar, it is the Sevens format that keeps the beautiful game alive in Edathanattukara. The football-crazy populace here does not really exaggerate when they say there would not be a single Sevens football tournament in Kerala without a player from Edathanattukara.

After being confined to the amateur world of Sevens Football for long, Edathanattukara's tryst with professionalism began in 1970 following the formation of the Challengers Club with the objective of playing the regular 11-a-side football. Today, the club has 170 active players apart from 125 aspiring footballers at its academy. As the club does not own a ground, the soccer academy is based at the Government Oriental High School ground in Edathanattukara. Over the years, the ground has been upgraded to international standards by spending over Rs 20 lakh. 

There is not a single player in the Challengers Club who has not played at least at the district level. The club has bragging rights for the No. 17 jersey of the national team. Winger V P Suhair, who recently debuted for the Indian team in a friendly match against Bahrain, is the latest in a long line of top players who owe some of their success to the Challengers Club. Kerala Santosh Trophy players Muhammed Parakkottil and C Nihal, Kerala Police's C Sajid, former SBT player V P Suneer are some of the other successful footballers to have emerged through the ranks of the Challengers Club. The current coach of the club is M Subramanian. 

The club contributes significantly to charity as a large chunk of the profit made from football is spent on noble causes.  Using the money raised through organising sevens tournaments, the club constructed a new building for the Edathanattukara Pain and Palliative Centre. Every year, a substantial part of the profit would be kept aside to provide medical and financial assistance to the differently-abled community and poor families in and around Edathanattukara, said the office-bearers of the club. 

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