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 Hachioji Koen, Sat 7th June.
The final finally arrived after a few changes and postponements, we had got there. Not bad for our first season!
We all arrived, uncharacteristically, early at the station, eager to play the final of the Plate. We were so early that the other team didn’t turn up for another 2 hours!
Thinking that we had won without even playing we got down to using the lovely pitch at Hachioji park and set out a 9 aside game for fun. The opposing team turned up with 8 players and we decided to get started.
Given we had a full strength side and they were down to seven outfield players we made a dominating start, Kev Gray was fed repeatedly down the left wing and proceeded to cross some dangerous balls into the box.
 The defenders, me being one of them, spent most our time on the half way line which rarely happens! Deciding it wouldn’t be fair to wup them at this point we passed the ball, controlled the play and tried to walk it into the goal, which didn’t quite go to plan as they eventually had enough players to have a full squad.
After awarding Kev the FIFA fair play award for not scoring having had so many opportunities (!!!) we started to play properly. To offset this niceness, Ivan came on for his debut Panthers performance and proceeded to slide tackle their winger from behind and take him and the ball and shortly after that a yellow card!!
The end of the first half ended as it had begun with no goals for either side and Panthers having most of the play.
 The second half began after the shortest half time (there was another game after us and we were already late!) we got back down to it. Yusepe received a deflected ball from Nick’s cross and shot low to the left of the goalie, it could have been a finger tip save but for the power of the shot. We were 1-0 up and ready for some more. Keeping hold of the ball and spreading the play down the wings left a lot of balls floating into the box, sadly we didn’t capitalise on these chances. The opposing team however wasn’t willing to sit there and let us take the win and tried with some success to get through our pretty tight defense. Some nice inter play from the strikers on their team led to an open chance and a fabulous one on one save from Tomo, our super keeper. Some long range shots didn’t trouble the diminutive keeper as he kept virtually everything out.
 We finally won our second as the ball pinged around the box for a tap in by one of newest recruits. Having played for nearly two hours by this point we were getting tired and despite hurling myself at the ball in a final ditch challenge a shot went in on target rebounded off the keeper and into the path of their striker who tapped it in for a nice goal.
Keeping the pressure on the other team tried, in vain, to equalize. The defense were on form and kept everything out from this point on.
A fine victory for the Panthers who celebrated in style by having another nice cup of tea after the game and then all going home at an extremely reasonable hour and going nowhere near alcohol or those strip bars!.
Report by Lee Rawlinson
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