Nationals: Gloucester Celtic, Edmonton Victoria claim senior titles

Gloucester Celtic PHOTO: CANADA SOCCER

It certainly wasn’t the final that anyone had expected. And it wasn’t a thriller, like last year’s championship game.

But Gloucester Celtic, from the Ottawa area, can boast it’s the best senior amateur men’s team in the country. A 3-0 win over the Surrey United Firefighters in Halifax Monday was all the proof needed. The win gave Celtic the Challenge Trophy, emblematic of men’s senior soccer supremacy.

The team in green-and-white hoops scored three times in a 20-minute span to start the second half; but the die was cast just after the game was a half-hour old. Surrey’s Vince Stewart was sent off for stamping an opponent, and it was always going to be a battle for the British Columbians. The hectic Challenge Trophy schedule forces teams to play on a daily basis, so having to cope with 10 men for the better part of an hour was an especially tough ask.

Ryne Gulliver scored the first and third goals for Gloucester, while Alex Walker offered the meat-in-the-sandwich goal.

Liam Miller had a shot go off the bar before being foiled on the rebound, Surrey’s best chance for a late consolation goal.

Going into the tournament, any bettor would have placed safe odds on a rematch of last year’s final, which saw Royal-Select Beauport triumph over Edmonton Scottish in penalty kicks after a thrilling 3-3 draw.

With Scottish bringing back a lineup augmented by former NASL players and Beauport boasting Samuel Georget, the French-born midfielder who was named the CIS top player in 2012, it would have been hard to bet against either. But Scottish had a disappointing tourney, getting nowhere near the final, while the Firefighters took out Beauport on their run to the championship game.

While Edmonton Scottish disappointed on the men’s side, the Alberta capital got good news from the women’s side. Nicola Weber’s 88th-minute goal gave her side the 1-0 win over Royal-Select Beauport’s women’s team in Halifax. It was Weber’s fourth goal of the tournament.

Weber’s goal came just minutes after Beauport’s Joelle Gosselin struck the bar with her effort.

Of note, the Victoria squad featured Selenia Iacchelli, who played for the Edmonton Aviators in their sole W-League season (2004) before the club declared bankruptcy.