Powell River Villa played two games over the weekend and each result was of huge importance to the team.
The first one on Saturday evening, February 21, in Victoria was against Sagres FC and Villa squeaked by its host 1-0 to play on for the George Pearkes Cup.
It was right back at it on Sunday afternoon against a tough third-seeded Juan de Fuca and in this one Powell River, running on fumes, was on the short end of a 2-0 score.
A week ago, Villa struggled against Vic West in the opening round of cup play but it got off to a much better start Saturday against Sagres.
Even though the team was without key players like Daniel Paul, Curtis McMillan, Trevor Harry, Bo Seung Kwan and Rob Devlin, it took early control of this match.
Newly signed Reese Unger, and a healthy Kye Taylor at centre back, helped Villa to a couple of chances to score in the first half.
Brody Harry was hauled down in the box but the referee didn’t see it that way and on another Billy Bagiopoulos got behind his man but his pass to Unger turned into a shot that narrowly missed the mark.
Despite the advantage in play the score remained tied heading into the break where coach Chris McDonough asked his team for a little more.
“It still wasn’t up to the quality that we’ve shown throughout the year,” he said, “but it was an improvement on what we were last week. We wanted to simplify things and because they are a physical team, we kind of got caught holding the ball a little bit. We could have made things easier on ourselves if we just moved the ball quicker.”
Easier said than done because Sagres, possibly encouraged by the score, came out much stronger in the second half. However, scoring chances were equal, with Bagiopoulos actually scoring but called offside on the play.
Villa could have used that goal as it incurred a couple of injuries that emptied the bench of fresh legs and brought substitutes Craig Simmons and Marm Fortier into the game.
There’s no doubt fatigue was becoming a factor but at the 88-minute mark the game took a weird turn.
A six-yard pass back to the Sagres’ keeper who handled the ball gave Villa an indirect kick which was taken by Taylor.
The entire Sagres team lined up a wall but Taylor passed wide to Bagiopoulos who punched in the game’s only goal.
“We scored really late,” said McDonough, wincing, “and got out of Dodge. Not the prettiest win but we’ll take it and move on.”
Move on it did, to a league game the next day against Juan de Fuca.
With injured players Julien Welp and David Bertrand still on the sidelines the skeleton crew played remarkably well against a fresh side.
Matt Liknes made some nice saves in the half to keep the game scoreless through 45 minutes but an injury to Taylor in the second half meant Villa was down to 10 men for the last 25 minutes.
Credit should go to the tired crew for stepping up and staying with Juan de Fuca but with just five minutes to go a centre cross was handled by a Villa defender and Juan de Fuca scored on its penalty kick.
Villa had a couple of opportunities in the dying minutes but Juan de Fuca made it 2-0 on the last play of the game with a shot off the post.
This was the team’s second league loss of the year and Villa still has two more regular season games at home to clinch a promotion to division two.
In the meantime, with its win against Sagres FC, it advances to the next round of the George Pearkes Cup against Campbell River Cermaq City FC 3A, leaders of division 3A with a record of 9-1-5.
The game will be played at 2:30 pm on Saturday, February 28, at Willow Point Park recreation centre in Campbell River.
