As Powell River Villa prepares to celebrate its 50th anniversary this weekend by hosting Comox in Vancouver Island Soccer League action, here is a look back at one of the club's highlights. The following article written by Max Low was published in the Victoria Times Colonist on April 9, 1995.
Villa hoists the hardware in soccer shocker
Tight defence tumbles top-ranked Allsports in title game
Stingy Powell River Villa ended a season-long unbeaten streak by Allsports Italia on Saturday, April 8, with a stunning 2-0 victory in the Jackson Cup soccer final before about 700 fans at Royal Athletic Park.
When the evenly match teams clashed previously in Vancouver Island Soccer League Division 1 play, they tied 0-0 in Victoria and, rather surprisingly, Allsports won 4-2 in Powell River.
“That was a great game but we gave them four chances and they scored four times,” Villa’s playing-coach Duncan MacDougall explained before Saturday’s final kicked off. “You can’t give a good team that many chances or they’ll bury you.”
Well, the Villa defenders cut down on those chances Saturday and it was they who did the burying this time.
“Today, we shut down their chances,” MacDougall said as his teammates jubilantly held the Jackson Cup aloft. “We were a lot more prepared and willing to take this away.”
So stingy was the Powell River defence, in fact, that Allsports’ lethal Nick Gilbert-Dante Zanatta midfield combination and twin strikers Dimitri Gilbert and John Soares couldn’t create any scoring chances until the game’s dying moments. Even then Villa goalkeeper Cam Kleimer was equal to the task.
Kleimer preserved his shutout by diving at Mark Wutzke’s feet and robbing him of the ball with two minutes left and leaping to save a high shot by Soares in injury time.
But the game’s real heroes were Brett Pence, who controlled the midfield for Villa and earned MVP honours, and the back four defenders: Willy Cooke, Doug MacLean, Bob Bogoslowski and MacDougall, who closed down the potent Allsports attack.
It was obvious, Powell River was buoyed to a super-human team effort by their very vocal fans who travelled with them. At halftime, they streamed onto the filed carrying a banner proclaiming: “We are with you, Villa. Let’s do it!”
They did it.
When Pence scored the first goal at the 10-minute mark and Ian Carroll got the second one on a corner kick at 29 minutes, the Villa fans broke into song (to the tune of “The Gang’s All Here”) that said in part: “We don’t care what Victoria says, if there’s a show, Villa will be there.”
The Jackson Cup is Vancouver Island Soccer League’s version of the FA Cup in England and Copa del Rey in Spain and has been contested since 1915. In addition to winning in 1995, Villa also hoisted the trophy in 1991, 1997 and 2000.
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