Ilkley Juniors Under-Tens have achieved the not inconsiderable feat of defending their trophy at the Wigton Moor Junior Six-A-Side Tournament in Leeds!

Featuring a strong selection of sides from all over the region, including Harrogate Railway, Pannal Sports, Ripon, Knaresborough and Yorkshire Amateur, to name but a few, Ilkley knew it would be tought to triumph again.

The tournament takes a World Cup-like format, with group stages and the winners and runners-up going through to the knockout stages, featuring quarters, semis and the final.

The young Olicanians, interspersed with a few Addinghamians, in traditional England style, started the tournament slowly with a 1-0 reverse against the Yorkshire Amateur after completely dominating the match but allowing the opposition one chance after an unfortunate ricochet in defence, which was snaffled up in predatory style.

Fortunately, this was to be their only defeat of the whole tournament as a restructured team clicked into gear to finish their group as table-toppers, accounting for hosts Wigton Moor, Ripon and arch-rivals Pannal Sports on the way.

Nemesis Pannal managed to scrape through in second place with a narrow defeat of Ripon, meaning a further meeting was possible at the semi-final stages.

Alfie Warren played the lone ‘Rooney’ role up front as centre forward, and, unlike his England counterpart, was most definitely in-form, holding up the ball unselfishly and allowing the likes of Louis Brow to finish off the moves with eight goals in total and the tournament’s Golden Boot.

But it was Warren himself who got the goal of the tournament following a mazy run into the box and a sublime finish.

With Barney Addenbrook virtually impenetrable in goal, chan-ces were few and far between for the opposition as captain Jake O’Connor marshaled the defence with aplomb, adding to his terrier-like tackling.

The pure speed of Christopher Davies in covering so much ground, and his normal fierce passion, meant that the opposition were constantly frustrated by this livewire Liverpudlian.

Add the legendary left foot and class of Oliver Mee, and some of the football played was a joy to behold.

As fate would have it, Ilkley had to once again overcome Pannal Sports in the semi-final in a competitive match that controversially went into extra time, including a winning ‘golden goal’ by Brow that wasn’t realised by the referee to be the ‘winner’.

Thankfully, Brow got a second to put the issue beyond doubt and, despite the heat, Ilkley tore out of the blocks against Knaresborough, Warren, Brow, Davies and Mee scoring in a one-sided final.