On Sunday October 19, 2014, the St. Martin (MAF) Veterans Football Club were crowned as back-to-back Champions at the 3rd annual Old Madrid Masters Invitational Football Tournament held at the Greenland Football Field. Photo: Provided

MVP Denis Andrews and Best Goalkeeper Jean-Luc Marconnet. Photo: Provided

St Martin celebrate Masters Football victory. Photo: Provided

The winning save by St Martin's veteran goalie. Photo: Provided

The visiting Frenchmen collected the winner’s Cup for the second year in a row, following an exciting final match against Tortola’s Willful Skillful Combined Stars, ending with sudden-death penalty kicks when the score remained tied at 1-1 after regulation – a virtually identical result of last year’s championship match between the same two Clubs.

It took nine attempts and three spectacular penalty saves by the MAF Goalkeeper Jean-Luc Marconnet to seal the deal with a 7-6 victory in the penalty shoot-out. His counterpart, former BVI National Team goalie Montgomery “Monty” Butler also made two great saves and even had a chance to secure the victory for Combined Stars but missed his penalty kick.

A total of 5 Clubs participated in this year’s tournament, including the Virgin Gorda Veterans, St. Croix Retroactive, the two finalists, and of course hosts Old Madrid Masters, who took 3rd place in the contest with a 5-1 victory over STX Retroactive in the consolation match. The Anguilla Masters FC had also committed to participate but had to cancel their travel plans last week after the island nation was badly damaged by Hurricane Gustavo.

All teams proved that, despite the “masters” age of the experienced footballers – over 40, including some players over 60 - they still possess much skill, agility and even speed! In total 10 entertaining and competitive round-robin matches were played over the 2-day tournament, with the consolation and final matches taking place between the top 4 finalists on Sunday evening. Not only did were the St. Martin Veterans ultimately victorious, but it was a clean sweep in terms of individual awards, as they also took home the trophies for the Golden Boot (Denis Andrew with 8 goals), Best Goalkeeper (Marconnet), and M.V.P. of the tournament (Andrew).

Daniel Lesi, Manager of the St. Martin Veterans commented: “We are very happy with this victory. We knew that our opponents would come strong this year to prevent us from repeating as Champions but luckily we prevailed in the end. This was a very enjoyable tournament and we will definitely be back next year to go for the three-peat! We want to express our thanks to our hosts Old Madrid Masters for their hospitality, and in general we appreciate all the persons who contributed to the success of the event, we could not have asked for better.”

Anselm “Danny” Joseph, captain of the Combined Stars added: “Congratulations to our friends from St. Martin. Our team played well but just came-up short in the end, which was very disappointing. We came into the tournament high on confidence and displayed good football skills throughout. Despite the loss in the finals, we remain upbeat and look forward to an even better result next time”.

In his remarks during the awards and closing ceremony, Humphry Leue, President of the Old Madrid Masters FC, thanked the sponsors of the event – Digicel, Road Town Wholesale, MB’s Ice, OneMart, Alpha Consulting, and the Sports Desk of the Ministry of Education & Culture - for their support. “Without the generosity of our sponsors none of this would be possible” he said, adding: “we were also very pleased to see that the teams displayed good sportsmanship and camaraderie as always, and that there were no incidents, serious injuries or controversies during the tournament”.

He ended the ceremony by thanking all the participating teams, volunteers, and the fans and supporters who came out to watch the matches during the weekend and assured the crowd that “our tournament will grow from strength to strength and we look forward to having more teams participating in the future as we continue to make our contribution to Sports Tourism in the BVI”.