The inaugural match of the 1st Pandit Prem Nath Dogra Memorial Football Gold Cup Tournament formally started at Mini Stadium, Jammu, with the lighting of the lamp, followed by balloon and pigeons and introduction of the teams with Deputy Chief Minister & Chief Patron of State Sports Club, Dr. Nirmal Singh, BJP State President & Patron of the Club, Sat Sharma (MLA), MLC & Patron Ashok Khajuria, Joint Secretary J&K State Sports Council Shiv Kumar Sharma and JMC Commissioner Dr. Manmohan Singh and other dignitaries in the presence of a large number of people from various alks of life and the official of the State Sports Club,J &K.
State Sports Club presented mementos to the dignitaries as tokens of respected and souvenir.
This first match was played between Territorial Army and BSF, which was won by BSF by 1 goal by its player John. During the match, two numbers of yellow cards were shown to BSF and three yellow cards to Territorial Army.
Dr. Nirmal Singh, who was the Chief guest on the occasion, said that it is first of its kind of tournament being named in the memory of great nationalist Duggar leader Pt. Prem Nath Dogra, who was himself a good player of football and devoted his entire life for the cause of the nation in this state of Jammu & Kashmir. He said that the objective of starting this tournament is to provide an opportunity to the youth to get themselves associated with the sports and also learn about the life of the great leaders like Prem Nath Dogra. He further said that the main highlight of this tournament is that for the first time in the state a reward of rupees one lakh will be given to the winning team and rupees fifty thousand to the runner up team of this football tournament.
Centre Team Referee was Rocky while Dharampal, Rajinder Singh and Stanzin were Assistants Referees of the match.
The Organising Committee of this tournament comprises of Chairman & MLA Rajesh Gupta, President Rakesh Khanna. The member of the committee include Dr. Nirmolak Singh, Mohan Lal, Fiestous Sohtra, SM Gill, Bharat Bhushan, Vishwamitter, Gagan Kumar and Gandhi.
Prominent social and political personalities who had reached the venue of the event to boost the morale of the teams included Mohan Singh Chouhan, Ashwani Charangoo, Arun Chibber, N.D Rajwal, Rajeev Bhardwaj, Munish Sharma, Praduman Singh, Naresh Dogra, Baldev Singh Billawaria, Ayodhya Gupta, Kuldeep Magotra, Surinder Pargal, Parshotam Gupta, Murari Lal, Dr. Suresh Ajay Magotra, Varinder Raina, Sanjita Dogra, Sunil Sharma, Sanjeev Sharma, Vikas Sharma, Dr. Pardeep Mohtra, Puneet Mahajan, Anuradha Sharma, Sushma Gupta, Vidya Devi, Kanta Devi and Veenu Gupta.
