For whatever reason, be it nerves, butterflies or unable to cope with being the first-round favourite, Powell River Villa certainly didn’t look sharp to start the George Pearkes Cup.
Despite a rocky first half, where at times it looked lost and confused, the team’s conditioning kicked in and gradually took control to win comfortably 4-0.
Its opposition, Vic West Casuals of Division Four, arrived at Cranberry Field on Sunday, February 15, loose and ready to go after spending Saturday night in Powell River.
It was an older team of 11 players who came in with hopes of giving Villa a good test and in the early going found that, with a few breaks here and there, it just might pull off the upset.
While Villa’s attack was disjointed, the Casuals had a few good runs and dangerous chances on keeper Matt Liknes.
It delivered a flurry of pressure 25 minutes in when Liknes had to slide out to make a save and Rob Devlin had to block the rebound on an open net.
Five minutes later a Casuals’ forward beat two Villa defenders but his shot missed the post by less than a foot and a few minutes after that another shot went off two bodies and almost went into the net.
Another breakaway was thwarted by Villa’s Daniel Paul and a perfect free kick to an open Casuals player handcuffed the forward who, despite being open, was unable to head the ball toward the Villa net.
Outplayed and out-chanced Villa players heard it from the coaches at half time and responded almost immediately in the last 45 minutes.
A couple of moves were made, one of which was to put Nick van’t Schip into the driver’s seat of Villa’s scoring machine.
He was named Man of the Match when he fed the ball to the young legs that were wearing down the Casuals’ defenders.
Just five minutes into the second half he sent the ball up to Billy Bagiopoulos and the rest was magic.
“I was kind of frustrated because I wasn’t getting the ball,” explained Bagiopoulos, “and I told Kye [Taylor] if I don’t get it I can’t do what you want me to do. So I got it and cut in and just shot and it went in.” His shot was from 20 yards out.
With a method as simple as that, Villa kept up the pressure and at 70 minutes Bagiopoulos launched a hard drive that was stopped but the rebound was deposited by Braxton Leask.
After more pressure and several corners it was apparent that Vic West was suffering from fatigue and the only way to slow down Villa was through tackles.
With eight minutes to play Bagiopoulos was giving fits to two defenders and one of them handled the ball inside the box.
Brody Harry took the penalty kick and drilled Villa’s third goal in low, to the keeper’s left.
Five minutes later Harry, himself, was hauled down and Jake Kenmuir took a carbon copy penalty kick, low to the keeper’s left, to make it a 4-0 final.
Vic West put up a great fight but it wasn’t up to a 90-minute battle against the younger Villa.
“We came with 11 and we did everything we possibly could,” said tired Casuals defender Lucas Russell. “The difference was fitness and they had some subs and that was about it. We came out to give it a good go and maybe get an upset but no one is upset and good luck to Powell River. We hope they win it all so we can say we lost to the winners.”
The compliments came from both sides and Bagiopoulos said, “They were a real good team with good shape, defended well and they had a really good guy up front so we were getting nervous but I think we wanted to win more than they did.”
Coach Chris McDonough expected a battle saying, “It’s kind of what I had in mind. They were a hard-working veteran team that had a good run in Division Four and got promoted this year and have been pretty successful. They gave us a tough time in the first half that was a combination of their good play and our nervous play. We made a few adjustments at the half because our defensive shape wasn’t the best in the first half, and moved van’t Schip to midfield which worked very well.”
Villa moves on to play Sagres FC 3B at Finlayson Park at 8 pm on Saturday, February 21.
