Media Release

Bengaluru, Nov 7: Football means something to the Germainites. The old boys of St Germain School (recently renamed as St Germain Academy), a historic institution in Bengaluru, proved that on November 3. It was a ‘football carnival’ as over hundred old boys (men now!) of the institution, spread across three decades - the eighties, the nineties and the new millennium – got together for a football tournament. The tournament was put together by Bobin John, an alumni of the school who passed out in 1992 and who was part of the winning school football team in 1990. His passion to revive that ‘spark’ in all the football loving Germainites who passed out from this institution led to this event. He named it the Fr Hilary Memorial Tournament, to honour one of the great principals of this school, the Fr Hilary Pereira, who took the school to great heights in the 1980s.

Bobin said that he was pleasantly surprised that the entire event was put together in about two weeks. He gave the credit for this achievement to the facilitators of the participating batches - Cyril (batch of the 80s), Sagai (1995 batch), Pradeep (1998 batch), Bipin (2002 batch), Bijoy (2005 batch), Vinith (2008 batch) and Karthik (2009 batch). Bobin was the facilitator for the 1992 batch. These eight people worked closely for two weeks and the end result was something that had to be seen on November 3. Each batch came with their elegantly designed jerseys and most of them had most or part of the jerseys in the famous sporting colours of St Germain – Maroon & Black. The games were extremely competitive, even though each league match was only for 10 minutes. The eight teams were segregated into two pools and each team got to play three league games. After a grueling set of games, the semi-finals ended up between 1992 vs 2008 and 1995 vs 2005. Both the games were nail biting and the summit clash between 1992 and 2005 went all the way down to the wire with 2005 narrowly winning it (2-1) and being crowned the champions of this historic tournament.

The tournament had a very nostalgic opening with the surprise element being the presence of the present director of St Germain Academy, Fr Dr Christopher Vimal Raj. Bobin found out that it was Rohit Pereira, the president of the OBA. (Old Boys Association), who made this surprise possible. Bobin was extremely grateful to Rohit and the OBA and was categoric that this tournament would not have been so successful if it was not for the tremendous backing he received from the OBA to conduct this unique tournament. It was a very special and nostalgic moment as the 100+ Germainites (in their 40s, 30s & 20s), lined up team-wise, and along with Fr Dr Christopher and the two legendary sports masters of St Germain – Samraj and Steven – sang the school anthem.