Chennai welcomes Turf 137 on Velachery Main Road, the first open 5-a-side football arena which has been approved by the governing body, FIFA.The arena has already caught the fancy of many football enthusiasts and there are plans to expand it to several places in the city.
CHENNAI: Velachery Main Road is choca- bloc with traffic throughout the day, and the locality itself has very few free playgrounds, but it’s about to change, for the better. Merely a few feet from the road stands a brand-new football turf. It has already created excitement among the footballers in the city. Christened Turf 137, Chennai’s first open 5-a-side football arena was opened on Saturday with a special match featuring the Chennai City FC team. Launched by TRK Global, headed by entrepreneur and businessman Thirukumaran Roopkumar, the turf saw its inaugural match between two teams of the Chennai City team in red and yellow respectively, as they gauged and revelled in the feel of the FIFA-approved turf. Thirukumaran came up with the idea of bringing a ground like this to Chennai during a discussion with a friend a couple of months ago.
“My friend and I were having a discussion on how the football scene in Chennai was picking up. It didn’t cross my mind at that point that this could be a good business venture until I met Sai Sathvik, the CEO of I Am Play, an app that connects the footballers and lets them form teams and book grounds. It’s popularly called ‘Tinder for Footballers’,” he laughs. Once the idea took shape, it was only a matter of months to set it up; he converted a family plot into the turf premises.
“The name of the turf actually comes from the address — my family used to live here before and it was No 137 before we moved out and demolished the house,” he smiles. Thirukumaran takes pride in the fact that it is the first open football arena in Chennai all the other turfs are caged structures. “The entire arena is only netted. The turf was specially imported from Amsterdam with 60 mm grass and requires very little maintenance,” he says. “We wanted to ensure that players did not develop any knee problems, which was a possibility if we had constructed a normal concrete turf and put a layer of grass over it. So we went for the original FIFA-approved layout, with one-and-a-half feet of padding below it.” The arena is already getting attention with footballers making a beeline for it.
“We have different slots for weekends and weekdays and the prices vary accordingly,” he says, adding that the earliest starts at 5 am and on certain days, there are even slots available till 2 am. He is also looking to expand to Santhome, ECR and OMR. “In the near future , we’re even looking to let fans enjoy international matches by screening them at the turf, and allowing them to camp and enjoy the match throughout the night,” he says. (For more information, look up the Turf137 Facebook page.)