Buried under the cricket hype, a small football club in Gujarat is on the verge of making a little splash of its own — in Australia.

Set up by a Vadodara-based football fan C Sadanand in 1999, Providence Club built itself brick by brick, with players, mostly from a poor background, selling vegetables and making detergent powder to fund the team. And now the club set to go to Canberra to participate in the 17th Kanga Cup, a popular annual youth tournament.

“Their years of struggle have paid off. The people of Gujarat will now know that there is football even in this state,” says Hardev Jadeja, secretary, Gujarat State Football Association.

Sadanand said he would reveal the club’s plans for the under-15 boys tournament starting July 8 at a press conference. But this newspaper talked to those who have seen the club rise from just a bunch of enthusiastic Kerala boys, whom the former IPCL employee brought over from his home state.

Launched with about 15-20 players, and no sponsor, the team started supporting itself first by selling vegetables door-to-door. Then the players started retailing through the Providence Super Store in Vadodara, also distributing sports goods before launching their own home-made detergent powder, which they called Team.

Now, the club even conducts regular coaching programmes in Vadodara schools. “The club has struggled a lot. All the players used to stay together in a flat. In the morning, they would go to various factories for work, in the afternoon, they would go door to door to sell their products and in the evening practise football,” said Gulab Chauhan, a FIFA referee, based in Ahmedabad.

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