In it’s inaugural season, the Football Mid North Coast (FMNC) under 17-18 zone champions league got under way on Friday night with the top team in the southern zone of FMNC, the Tuncurry Forster Football Club Tigers Black taking on the second placed team from the northern zone of FMNC the Lake Cathie Raiders.
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Instead of the usual semifinals format, the champions league is designed to reward the best teams in the respective competitions with a high quality round robin competition, where the four teams play each other once, and the top two teams at the end of the group stage play each other for the zone championship on premier league grand final day.
The Tigers started sharply, with little more than a couple of minutes gone before they opened the scoring through Will Moran.
However, the Raiders were almost instantly level with a fine free kick from Kane Pollard.
This spurred the Tigers into action though, and by half time they had effectively put the contest to bed, scoring four more times through Will Moran again, Paul Elliott, Hayden Amato and Michael Chisholm.
The second half saw a much more even contest with the talented Raiders midfield starting to control the game at times, and this along with some wayward finishing from the Tigers meant they only added one more goal to their total.
Michael Chisholm’s second for the match saw the final score TFFC Tigers 6 Lake Cathie Raiders 1.
Match two for the evening saw northern zone premiers, Port Saints Wolves take on the second placed team in the southern zone, the Great Lakes Vikings.
After a very even start to the match with some expansive play from both sides, the Wolves started to create the lion’s share of the chances.
It was against the run of play then when Liam Johnson opened the scoring for the Vikings on the stroke of half time.
This however did not deter the Saints and they grabbed control of the game within minutes of the restart, and put four unanswered goals past the Vikings keeper to run away comfortable winners, final score Port Saints Wolves 4 Great Lakes Vikings 1.
Next week sees the Tigers take on the Vikings, and the Raiders against the Saints.
Both the Raiders and the Vikings will need big wins to get themselves on the scoreboard but also to reverse an unhealthy goal difference if they are to feature on grand final day.