North Central Victoria soccer coach Corey Scoble has hailed his under-16s team’s victory at the Kanga Cup as equal to any achievement by a representative squad from the region.
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NCV United capped an unbeaten run at the southern hemisphere’s biggest international youth soccer tournament as it won Friday’s final against Brisbane’s John Paul International College, 4-0, at the AIS in Canberra.
“Bendigo have won Victorian Country Championships – like we did the week before – seven or eight of these kids won that, then a week later we win this,” Scoble said.
“Bendigo soccer’s never won anything bigger than this; it’s just a massive thing to win.”
Eleven of the 14-player squad play for Bendigo Amateur Soccer League teams, with Spring Gully men’s senior coach Scoble calling the shots.
NCV United got off to a flying start at the tournament, with a 2-1 victory over Canberra FC.
United went on to topple Woden Valley Reds 5-0, Shellharbour FC 6-0, Far South Coast 5-0 and Devonport Strikers 12-1.
It set up a semi-final against group A runner-up Capital Football ACTAS – the territory’s representative team.
The ACT set a cracking early pace to lead 1-0 at half-time, but NCV pressed after the break and Golden City forward Eh Soo She drilled the equaliser from a free-kick just three minutes from full-time.
United, comprising the Loddon Mallee region, went ahead with She striking again, before the locals responded in the dying seconds.
It set up an intense penalty shoot-out which NCV won 4-3 after a stunning save from Strathdale ‘keeper Isaac West.
“We ran onto the ground, all the parents were running on, it was huge,” Scoble said.
“The ACT Academy, they’re your best kids in that level around the Canberra region – there’s three or four of them in the Socceroos program. So for us to go up there and win it was just huge.”
The grand final at the AIS was all NCV’s after it made the most of some good fortune when John Paul hit the crossbar early.
Spring Gully’s Sam Scoble opened the scoring with a cracking effort, matched by City’s Godwill Basha.
Basha added the third before Irymple’s Yanni Voliotis put the icing on the cake with a toe-poke just before the final whistle.
“The kids just loved it. For the guys that run the AIS program to come up to me after the game and say ‘your boys are really good’, for a set of country boys to do this is really special,” Scoble said.
Team: Travis Robertson, Charlie McCormick, Michael Maloney, Piers Cresp, Isaac Commadeur, Joe Williams, Godwill Basha, Eh Soo She, Sam Scoble, Isaac West, George Voliotis, Yanni Voliotis, Mitch Langenbacher, John Roberts, Max Perrins.