–  Winners  take home $200,000 first prize
TEAM 25 walked away the winners of the inaugural Stag Beer 7-A-Side street football tournament that concluded in Linden over the weekend.
In the process, they pocketed the tournament’s first prize of $200,000 with their 2-1 win over Silver Bullets in the finals. Watched once again by a large  crowd at the Mackenzie Sports Club Hard Court, the star studded Team 25 that featured the likes of former senior National player Quacy Johnson, along with former national stand-out and under-20 coach Collie ‘Hitman’ Hercules, certainly used their skill factor as a lethal weapon to help them lift the coveted title.

The two teams  begun the battle with lots of cheers from the anxious crowd, and while many agreed that Team 25 was the better team ‘on paper’, it was still hard to openly pick a winner, since it was seen in the tournament that the smaller and little known sides can upset the much more established ones.

Team 25 after failing to score in regulation and extra time against Rough and Rugged in the semi-finals, didn’t want to head into penalty kicks again, but again, they didn’t score the easy opportunities that were presented to them.

Silver Bullets held their own, and played a more defensive game, holding Johnson and the experienced Hercules at bay.

However, in the penalty shootout, Johnson sealed the deal for Team 25 like he has been doing throughout the tournament after the scores were tied 1-1 with his shot being the last.

Silver Bullets would only have themselves to blame for their lacklustre approach in the penalty shootout that saw them looking on as Team 25 and its supporters celebrated in style on the MSC hard court.  They (Silver Bullets) will carry home $100,000 for finishing second place.

Meanwhile, Rough and Rugged of Amelia’s Ward copped the third place prize of $50,000 when they defeated Hard Knocks from the Wismar shores 2-1 on penalty kicks.

The presentation of prizes will be done today at the 20/20 sports bar in Linden.

The event which was organised by the 20/20 Sports Bar and Young Achievers was hailed as successful, according to member and spokes person of the promoters Anthony White.

He said that it was nice having everyone coming out in full numbers to support the event and this will be an annual something so, next year it will be bigger and better.

White added that this year it was incident free and everyone, the players, the spectators really worked with us.
So to them we say thank you, and not forgetting Ansa McAl and Stag Beer, they are the ones who really made this possible and I must say that the players are very happy, because $200,000 is a lot of money to play for, and next year it will even be bigger.”