History
Formation and early years
The team was formed with the involvement of Rashid Tabassum, a Muslim League loyalist who was also involved with various hockey and football associations. [3]
In 1946, the team won the All-Pakistan Ataturk Soccer Tournament. [4] In early 1947, the team played a match against the touring Afghan Sporting Club from Kabul at the Feroze Shah Kotla Ground in Delhi. [3] The match was attended by Muhammad Ali Jinnah along with his sister, Liaquat Ali Khan, and other members of the Muslim League including Ghazanfar Ali Khan and I.I. Chundrigar. [3]
1949 Tours
In late 1949, the team toured Burma and Ceylon for nine-weeks. The team consisted of seventeen players who mostly had all-India or Inter-provincial appearances to their names. They were captained by Mr. S. A. Samad Jr., who previously played for Mohammedan Sporting and also served as the assistant manager on their tour. The team was managed by Mr. Rashid Tabassam, who was the Associate Secretary of the Pakistan Football Federation and Honorary General Secretary of the club. [5] [6] The club also included several Pakistan national team players such as Abdul Wahid Durrani, Dad Muhammad, Ismail Jan, Ahmed Ali Phullo, and Taj Mohammad Jr. [7] These players would go on to represent Pakistan in several tournaments in the later years. [8] [9] [10]
Tour to Burma
The team visited Rangoon, Burma in November of 1949. They played three matches held in Rangoon, the Burma Selected XI managed to defeat the team once, with the other two games ending both in draws. [11] [12] The only known result of this tour is the game which took place on 10 November, where Jinnah Gymkhana club lost by three goals to the Burmese Selected XI. [13] [14] Their match on 5 November drew a capacity crowd and was attended by the Pakistani Ambassador to the Burma as well as several Burmese Ministers. [15]
Tour to Ceylon
After the tour to Burma the club decided to play games in Ceylon. [16] [17] [18] The team left Rangoon on November 21 and arrived in Colombo on November 25. The team consisted of 17 players. [19]
Jinnah Gymkhana club played a Ceylon Football Association team on 26 November; the tourist won 4-3. [20] They faced the City League XI on 27 November where both teams drew by nil. [21] The next match was against Ceylon on 30 November, [22] where the team beat them by four goals to nil, with Kassim scoring a hat-trick and a goal by Afzal. [7] On 1 December 1949, the visitors lost to Kandy XI by two goals, with Mustapha scoring their only goal of the game. [23] The team was feted at Kandy where several receptions were held for them. [24]
Jinnah Gymkhana played another match against Ceylon on 3 December 1949, where they won by a goal from Samshaud. [25] [26] The game was opened with remarks by Ceylon's Prime Minister, D. S. Senenayake. [26] In their final match of the tour on 4 December, the team defeated Colombo City League XI by 5–1. [27] [28] [29]
Later years
In 1955, It was decided that the team would play a number of Exhibiton Matches in countries such as Singapore, Malaya and Burma. [30] However, It is unclear whether the team actually toured the countries to play these matches.
In 2003, the team featured in several tournaments in Karachi. [31]
