Played under brilliantly clear skies, a last-second goal capped off a must-win home game for Powell River Villa on Sunday.
Division 3A last place Juan de Fuca fought tooth and nail for its first point of the year but couldn’t hold off Villa who scored in the last second of the game for a 2-1 victory.
It wasn’t as neat and tidy as coach Chris McDonough would have liked but early indications were that Villa was in for a long day.
Juan de Fuca put up quite a fight in the early going and it pressed hard to put Powell River players on their collective heels.
After a couple of saves by keeper Matt Liknes, the visitors shocked Villa with a clean strike from 20 yards that went in high to Liknes’s right.
Down 1-0 after 15 minutes was a shocker but Villa stepped up the pace immediately to get back in the game.
Hard work and a nice cross from Brandon Knox to Dean Thorsell almost worked, then Knox got in alone but his shot went just wide of the target.
He was rewarded for his tenacity when a bobbled ball ended up with a call on the keeper for putting the clutches on Knox in the box.
The ensuing penalty kick by Ben Elliot was perfectly placed into the lower right corner and at 32 minutes the game was tied 1-1.
The second half was all Villa as it appeared as though Juan de Fuca was content to defend the 1-1 result.
Villa, however, was hungry for the win and had a number of excellent scoring chances throughout the half.
Thorsell, Rob Devlin, Brody Harry and Jordan Peters all had cracks at it but the winner didn’t come until a series of substitutions were made.
After a lot of pressure and a multitude of near misses on corner kicks, 15-year-old Billy Bagiopoulos launched a beauty over the scrambling crowd in front of the goal and onto the head of Braxton Leask.
“I took a couple of corners and I felt something coming,” said Leask, who came into the game with 10 minutes to play.
“It kind of sailed over everyone and I tried to go high because the goalie was good on the ground. It went off the goalie’s hand and then went up top.”
The referee’s whistle sounded right behind his goal and with a sense of relief players and coaches knew they had dodged a bullet.
“Do I put it in off my gut or jump to volley it in?” said veteran Devlin of his earlier chance to get the winner. “I jumped and it went right off the bottom of my shin pad and over the net. We were lucky we didn’t run out of time there, but we were unfortunate not to score earlier. We hit crossbars twice and their goalie played a really good game and made a lot of good saves.”
His coach agreed wholeheartedly. “We made it tough on ourselves with a ton of chances but just couldn’t put the ball in the net,” said McDonough.
Fresh legs and combinations were tried throughout with the last ones proving to be successful.
“He’s been training with us for the last month and he’s really skilled,” he said of Bagiopoulos. “He played a pretty high level in Greece and I wanted to bring him in to get him adjusted to Canada and the team. He had some nice corners in the end and he’s very good on the ball.”
The win was needed to place Villa close to the top of division 3A. “We pick up ground on some of the teams and that’s important because there’s about five teams in the mix,” said McDonough. “No one is going to run away with the league at this point.”
Villa plays on Saturday, November 2, in Victoria against one of those teams, Castaways FC 3A.
