Wednesday, June 30, 2010

Lhasa United vs The Marmots



In continuation with my post of yesterday on football in Tibet, I post today some abstracts of Chapman's notes.
While in Tibet, Freddie Spencer Chapman, the Private Secretary of Sir Basil Gould, the Political Officer in Sikkim, Bhutan and Tibet kept the British Mission Diary (he also took some of the earliest pictures of Roof of the World).


An entry on November 9th 1936 mentions: "First round of seven-a-side football. It was uncomfortably hot playing. Every day now the temperature rises well above 60 [degrees] F. but at night there are ten to fifteen degrees of frost" (Lhasa Mission, 1936: Diary of Events', Part IX p. 1, written by Chapman).
On an other occasion, Chapman recounts: "Today we were challenged to a game of 'Soccer' by Lhasa United, a team picked from Tibetan, Ladaki (Mohammedan) and Nepalese sides. They turned out in garish Harlequin-coloured shirts. After a good, clean, hard game the Mission Marmots (as we call ourselves) won by scoring the only goal of the day. The goal was so small that the only hope of scoring was to go through oneself with the ball. Playing at 11,800 feet is not as much of an ordeal as one would imagine, and we appeared to be no more breathless than our opponents. We now practice nearly every day and are thinking of picking up a number of seven-a-side teams to keep ourselves in training".
The British Mission team was known as the Marmots: “The Mission Marmots was the name given to the 1936 British Mission football team. The Mission established this team to play against various local groups (including “Lhasa United”) on a pitch behind the Norbhu Lingka. No goal was ever conceded by the British perhaps because they wore army field boots – prompting a request from the Ladakhis that the British should refrain from “wearing those fearful boots”. The football season came to an abrupt end when someone stole the goal posts to use for firewood and sandstorms became frequent. Team members Back row from left to right: Sonam, ?, Minghu. Middle row from left to right: Spencer Chapman, Dagg, Morgan, Nepean. Bottom row unidentified Tibetans. The lack of names for some of the Tibetan players in this photograph may be explained by the fact that only Norbhu (the Mission translator) was able to tell who was who amongst the Tibetan servants to the Mission.
Chapman describes this match against Lhasa United in October 1936: “Together with a crowd of supporters, our opponents were already there, turned out in garish harlequin-coloured silk shirts with L.U. sewn on to the pockets. They were a remarkable looking team, and certainly needed to be “United”! There was a tough looking Nepali soldier, a Chinese tailor, three bearded Ladakhis wearing red fezes – the most hirsute being the goalkeeper, a Sikkimese clerk of Pangda-Tsang’s, and five Tibetan officials, including our friends Yuto, Surkang-Se, and Taring Dzongpon. The latter still had their charm-boxes on top of their heads, so were precluded from heading the ball”.
Another entry in Chapman’s dairy: "Today we were challenged to a game of 'Soccer' by Lhasa United, a team picked from Tibetan, Ladaki (Mohammedan) and Nepalese sides. They turned out in garish Harlequin-coloured shirts. After a good, clean, hard game the Mission Marmots (as we call ourselves) won by scoring the only goal of the day. The goal was so small that the only hope of scoring was to go through oneself with the ball. Playing at 11,800 feet is not as much of an ordeal as one would imagine, and we appeared to be no more breathless than our opponents. We now practice nearly every day and are thinking of picking up a number of seven-a-side teams to keep ourselves in training".

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