It was a good preparation for the upcoming qualifiers, hints Fazel Atrachali

“This was a good experience because we have already qualified for the Playoffs. This match was a positive for us because if we make mistakes like this in the Playoffs then we won’t get a second chance. It was a good match and a good learning experience that we should always have our guard up,” Atrachali said.

For U Mumba, Siddharth Desai was on a roll in a match which his side did not look at its best. He managed to pick fourteen points of which 13 were raid points and one was a bonus. In the defence, Rohit Rana and Surinder Singh made valuable contributions. But U Mumba coach Golamreza Mazandarani chose to praise the opposition and said that the Panthers played a courageous game.

The Panthers currently have 33 points from 17 games and sit at the last position on the points table in the Zone-A. For the Panthers the road to the qualifiers has long been closed, hence they seemed to have chosen to play a free game against U Mumba. Panthers’ coach Srinivas Reddy was not a satisfied man as he thought that his team could have won the match if only a few things would have been done right.

"During the time-outs, both, the coach and I, were stressing that we are five players on the mat so we should wait for the opponent to make a mistake instead of trying for an aggressive tackle. Another mistake we made was that we were giving up points early without waiting for the entire raid clock to run down. But we have a young squad and the more they play, the more they will learn," Hooda said.