Page 49 - Demo

THE REVIEW
JANUARY’19-JUNE’19 49
Silver Jubilee of Rangers Hockey Club, Bangalore
By Alison Cabral, with inputs from Raymond Francis, Gerard DeNeise, and Rangers’ longest-serving member, Anil Ippachan (now Estate Manager at FAPS Bangalore), who has been with the club since 2001.
The main team was coached by then national- level hockey umpire Christy Santiago, while Alison himself coached the second team and the girls’ team. The club was even affiliated to the Bangalore branch of the Association
for a few years.
The trio ran the club together for six years, until Alison moved to a team in ‘B’ division in 2000.
Khalid, the team were runners-up in the BEL trophy of 2002 and won the Karnataka ‘C’ division league the same year—earning promotion to ‘B’ division. In the meantime, Khalid got a coaching job abroad, and
the club passed into the hands of his Canara Bank teammates, Shanmugam and Varghese John, who still run the club.
Rangers Hockey Club was started in Bangalore in 1994 by Simon Francis, Cuyler Peacock and Alison Cabral, mainly for Anglo-Indians. Since then, many talented Anglo-
Indian hockey players of Bangalore have donned
the iconic gold and green colours of Rangers at some time or other during their careers, or, at very least, had practised with the team.
Being a new club, Rangers started in the lowest league of Karnataka, ‘C’ division. They entered at least one team (made up of mostly Anglo-Indian boys) in the league and
in tournaments, and,
sometimes, fielded a
second team too (this
was initially made up of mostly Anglo- Indian youngsters, and later of FAPS Bangalore students—as Alison was the school’s hockey coach at the time). A girls’ team was also fielded from 1998 to 2001.
Simon and Cuyler continued to run the club as partners for three more years; Cuyler migrated to Melbourne in 2003. A couple of years later, Simon too migrated to Melbourne, leaving the organization
in the custody of the Canara Bank player and former international goalkeeper Khalid Modi, who had been the coach
of the team since 1999. There were still a fair few Anglo-Indian boys in Rangers line- ups, including Raymond Francis and Gerard DeNeise. Under
2011 or so,
when Sandy Browne (now in Chennai),
Adrian Jeremiah and Gerard DeNeise reactivated the then- defunct Anglo-Indian Guild Bangalore hockey team. All
the Anglo-Indian boys who had still been playing for Rangers left to join the Guild team, ending the presence of our boys in the Rangers Hockey Club. Unfortunately, the team was
The
status quo remained
until
not fielded for a year. Since then, the team has been rebuilt, however, with no Anglo- Indian presence. Later, with the judicious signings of former international players such as Jude Felix (former Indian captain, and, later, coach—a well-wisher of Rangers since 1999), Sabu Varkey, Lehn Aiyappa and others, the team won both the ‘C’
and ‘B’ division championships, earning promotion to ‘A’ division—where they still are - in their Silver Jubilee year!
Three cheers for the Rangers Hockey Club, Bangalore! Here’s wishing them all the best, for another 25 years, at least!
NOTE: Clive VanBeurle (current President of the Bangalore branch), Beverly Bastion (née VanBeurle) and Roger Beale Junior (now a committee members of the branch) all played for Rangers when they were younger.