State Bank of Travancore overcame 10-men Travancore Titanium 4-2 in the tie breakers after both teams kept the scores at 0-0 after 90 minutes and progressed in to the final of the 9th SBT GV Raja All-India Football Tournament 2012 at the University Stadium, Trivandrum.
SBT gained the upper hand in the first half with several efforts on goal throughout the first half. Titanium’s veteran cstodian Joby Joseph conceded an raly corner off Mohammed Aslam AG’s shot in the 7th minute. In the 14th minute, Usman P had an header fly wide of the goal from a Shibinlal VK’s cross ball.
Titanium’s center back Ebin Rose fell Mohammed Aslam inside the box for which the referee rewarded SBT with a spot kick. Shibinlal VK who took the penalty went to his left, and the goalkeeper guessed it right to save the kick. With the goalkeeper saving the day, Titanium revived their intent and two free kicks in the 30th and 32nd minute taken by Ebin Rose and Ramsheed came close to scoring.
The Bankmen had yet another golden chance to score as Usman headed the ball back to Tommy Antony whose volley from the box missed the left post by a whisker. The score at halftime surprisingly remained 0-0 even with several goal scoring opportunities.
In the second half, Titanium were more of an attacking force than in the first. Their first chance of the half was when Cleetus failed to meet a cross from the right in front of goal. The game looked to have turned in favour of SBT in the 59th minute when Titanium were reduced to 10 men when their right back Shaji had a rough tackle on SBT’s Johnson N. Titanium defied simple mathematics to look the better team as they threatened to score again in the 64th and 79th minute through Tommy Antony while SBT resorted to just defending.
First Tommy had a header fly wide of the goal from an Anthony cross. Then his free kick missed the top corner by just a few inches. But the score remained 0-0 at the end of the regulation 90 minutes and a penalty shoot out was called into decide the winner of the tight match.
In the tie breaker, Rinil CJ, Sarath BT, Johnson N and Sumesh N scored from the spot for SBT, while only Vinod Kumar and Ramsheed were on target for Titanium.
Mohammed Aslam NK missed SBT’s fourth kick while Cleetus (first kick), and Jas Khan (third kick) wasted for Titanium.
Runners-up SBT will meet the winners of the KSEB – Kerala Police that will be played later today.
From the archive. First published on footballkerala.com on Monday 1 October 2012. The database copy of this article was lost; it was recovered in 2026 from the Internet Archive's saved copy of the live page.