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Senior soccer players Scott Fisher and Tony Leach bring home gold

Two Powell River players return as winners at world championships
medal
MEDAL MASTERS: Tony Leach [left] and Scott Fisher were part of a gold-medal winning soccer team from Victoria at the recent World Masters Games in New Zealand. The games drew 25,000 athletes from around the world. Contributed photo

Two Powell River men recently returned home from the 2017 World Masters Games in New Zealand with gold medals around their necks.

“We old guys won,” said player Scott Fisher.

Fisher, along with Tony Leach, were members of gold medal soccer team Islanders Masters New Zealand FC from Victoria, after going undefeated in the tournament and then beating another Canadian team in the gold-medal game. Leach and Fisher joined approximately 25,000 senior athletes from around the world to compete in the games.

“It was seven games in nine days," said Leach. He added that the schedule would have been hard for a younger team, let alone for players 55 years old and over.

“The games were slightly shortened, in that they were only 30-minute halves, so they were an hour long instead of an hour and a half,” said Leach.

According to Leach, the ice baths that organizers had available for players after every game was the only thing that kept the men going.

“After every game,” he said, “you got to go in for two minutes, and then you got out and walked around for two minutes, and then you got back in for another two minutes,” he said. “That was one thing that really rejuvenated our legs and kept us going for the week.”

He said organizers also provided physiotherapists and massage therapists to keep the players on the field.

“We took full advantage of it all,” said Leach.

According to Fisher, the Canadian win likely surprised other nations when the team came out of nowhere and won gold against some stiff competition.

"We had to come back in a couple of games,” said Fisher. "We had a tie, which could have gone either way, with the New Zealand team.”