There’s quite a battle going on for top spot in Vancouver Island Soccer League’s division 3A and Powell River Villa is trying its best to stay in it. It collected a point against current leader SFFC Active Earth Engineering by tying 1-1 in Victoria, but at this point in the schedule it really needed the win. The game started out favourably for Villa who made the trip down Saturday morning for the evening game. It controlled the ball early and eventually took the lead on a 40-yard free kick by Ben Elliot at the 20-minute mark. He launched the ball into a crowd in front of the goal and Jake Kenmuir seized the opportunity to score his fifth of the year and put Villa up 1-0. Play evened out after that and with the score still 1-0 at the half, coach Chris McDonough stressed the importance of continued pressure. Neither side could really generate any good scoring chances, however, as the battles took place mostly at midfield until the latter stages of the game. With 10 minutes to go the home team took the bull by the horns and started to really pressure Villa’s net. The seemingly inevitable result was a goal when three players faced a single Villa defender and keeper Ross Fitzgibbon surrendered his clean sheet after a well placed shot. “We were giving the ball away a lot,” admitted McDonough, “and even after making a few changes the team wasn’t responding well. The other team came out really hard and you could tell they really wanted the points.” Villa came back hard after the tying goal but unfortunately failed to capitalize on a couple of good chances and had to settle for the single point. A road tie is an acceptable result but McDonough felt the team deserved better. “It was a little disappointing,” he said. “The three points would have been great against those guys and we did hold on to the 1-0 lead for most of the game. We were sitting in third and they were second but at least we kept pace with those guys.” A couple of players were added to the lineup for the trip who McDonough thinks will help the club in a couple of ways. “We’ve signed Sam Montgomery who will add some veteran presence,” he said, “and got back Brandon Knox who has been in the game for a while. We’ll get some size and some physical play from both of those guys and that helped a lot in the game.” Defence has never been a problem for Villa but scoring differential is still a concern. “We do play a lone striker so Jake is getting the majority of our chances,” said McDonough, “but we do work a lot on our shooting and finishing in practice. We’ve been scoring all right this year compared to last year but we’ve given up some goals this year as well.” So far Villa has had to deal with the top clubs in the division but this weekend sees last placed Juan de Fuca arriving to play on Sunday, October 27. Due to scheduling the start time has been delayed to 2:15 pm at Timberlane Park where Villa is hoping to overtake a couple of division leaders. “They are at the bottom of the table,” said McDonough, “and this is the time to break out with some of our guys to get some goals and make up ground in our goal differential.”
