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 Hachioji Park, Sat 26th April.
No less than twenty League places and 3 Divisions separate these two teams, and for long periods of this semifinal you'd have to say that it looked like it. But at the end of the game only a single controversial goal settled affairs in favour of the 1st Division side and so a very fine cup run for YCAC2nds finally came to an end.
On the Thursday before the game our own Ginger Wizard and player of the season, Phil "little legs" Denham failed a fitness test and was unable to play. So we planned to start with Gavin Margetson and Alex Goldie in midfield, which would have been fine - but after about 25 minutes Gavin chose that moment to pull his hamstring and spent the rest of the game waving a flag (and being ignored by the Ref).
 So no disrespect to Rob O'Grady and Alex, who battled all afternoon, but our central midfield needed reinforcements which unfortunately were not available. Still, we had no other selection problems and even had a guest appearence of Tom Taw from HK - his first apppearence for the 2nds in 6 years.
Right from kick-off the YCAC were under a lot of pressure. The speed and quality of the Hibs passing and movement was a real step up from anything we have seen this season and we struggled to deal with it. But one way or another each attack came to nothing.
Harty Heeson was tremendous in goal, several times going one-on-one with attacking players. Other times a last ditch tackle or a desperate foot in was all we could do to stem the tide. However, with the two Taws and Taiki we knew we had some speed available if only we could get the ball to them, and it was from a good through ball and chase on 15 minutes that we got our first corner. Excellent ball in from Karl Hahne which Hibs did not deal with, and Alex swivelled and shot through a crowd of players past a bemused Hitoshi.
1-0 to the underdogs - fairy tale stuff but a long, long way to go.
 The game continued pretty much as before - I wouldn't say one-way traffic, but continual Hibs pressure. I thnk after around 20 minutes we started to adjust to the pace of the game and the unusually large and flat pitch (we are from YCAC, after all).
We did try to get our wide men and Tom involved but in truth we were forced to play too deep and couldn't work the ball out of defence often enough.
We kept the lead until about 65 minutes when Harty parried a shot which fell neatly to the Hibs attacker who finshed very well.
1-1 until around 65 minutes when the afore-mentioned dodgy goal incident occurred. We conceded a free kick around 25 metres out, close to the corner of the penalty box. A nice cross was curled in, missing all defenders and attackers alike, bounced once and sneaked in at the far post.
 Cue riotous celebrations from the Hibs and furious flag waving from Gavin. The refs view was that the goal should stand because, although they were standing in an offside position, none of the Hibs players had actually touched it on the way in. Gavins view was that they had distracted and obscured the goalkeeper view and as a result the goal found it way in the back of the net.
Well, we've seen those sort of goals given and we've seen them disallowed. In this case, rightly or wrongly, the ref had no doubt.
The Hibs sat back a bit after scoring the second goal. We went to three at the back, pushing Simon forward, but couldn't apply enough pressure to get a second goal and the game ended 2-1.
A good cup run for YCAC2nds, which had seen us beat two other Division 1 teams and a Division 2 team, finally at an end. But no disgrace in losing narrowly to the Hibs. After-match celebrations started on the bus back to Tokyo and continued for some time.......
Report by Steve McKie
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