A Kottayam club which celebrates a Thrissur village

Parappur FC players go through their training routine ahead of their Kerala Premier League match against Don Bosco FA.
| Photo Credit: Nithin R.K.

A few years ago, when C.C. Hanson realised that his application to register a football club in Thrissur District was being rejected repeatedly, he decided to try another route. He bought St. Thomas, a club in Kottayam, and renamed it Parappur FC.

Parappur, a small village in Thrissur, is also the village where one of India’s football gems C.V. Pappachan came from. And Hanson, a former Calicut University captain who hails from the village, wanted a club from there to figure prominently in the country’s football map.

He moved the Kottayam club’s training base to Parappur and now his team is playing in the Kerala Premier League with former Minerva Punjab FC youth coach Sanjoy Kumar Dey as its head coach and former Maharashtra Santosh Trophy player P.J. Jose as manager.

Hanson realised that a successful club needed a strong base, so he also started under-13, 15 and under-18 academies.

“I went to study clubs in London and Fulham FC impressed me. I wanted to see how players were coming, now I want to scout for inborn talent and bring them up,” said the club’s secretary Hanson, in a chat with The Hindu at Parappur, as he showed the new building coming up which will house the main team and the young trainees.

Hanson’s hard work is already paying dividends. Parappur qualified for the AIFF Youth League from the under-17 Kerala Elite League a couple of days ago and in one of the matches it shocked Gokulam Kerala.

The team is also doing reasonably well in the KPL.

“The first big goal is to see Parappur play the Second Division I-League,” said Hanson.

Supported by South Indian Bank and Cochin Shipyard through the CSR route, Parappur has also picked around 40 tribal children in Wayanad and is now training them at Sulthan Bathery’s St. Mary’s School with long-term plans to include them in the main team.