Cometes bring Ottawa Fury’s W-League title defence to an end

Last year, the Ottawa Fury won the W-League. The year before that, the Fury lost the W-League Championship game. This season, they won’t be the Central Conference’s representative in the W-League’s final four. Last weekend, the Laval Cometes ended the Fury’s run of nine straight regular-season conference titles. On Saturday, after a 1-1 draw, an extra time that decided nothing and seven penalty kicks each, the Cometes won the Central Conference playoff crown — and will be off to the W-League’s Championship Series. With penalties level at 4-4 going into each team’s seventh kick each, it was the Fury that blinked. Lauren Hughes’s shot crashed off the post, leaving it to Amandine Pierre-Louis to give Laval the title with a successful kick. Pierre-Louis buried her attempt. The kicks were a cruel finish to a tight game. Kelsey Wilson gave the home side a 1-0 lead over the Fury early in the first half, converting a penalty after Christina Julien had been brought down in the box. Julien, looking to push her way back into the Canadian national-women’s team picture, is a former Fury player — and she tormented her former club on Saturday. But Ottawa wasn’t ready to allow the title to slip away. In the second half. Tessa Gavilsky was the first to get to a corner, and she directed the ball to Fury teammate Emily Gielnik, who finished the chance. Despite having a major advantage by getting to go first in the penalty shootout, it was the Fury who finally lost two rounds into the sudden-death phase. Credit to Pierre-Louis for keeping her nerve when the game was on the line. Now, it’s up to the Cometes if there is to be a second consecutive Canadian W-League champ.