The final, played at Las Teclas, La Herradura, was a strange affair involving three clubs, Motril C.F,  our own CD Almuñécar City and C.D Juventud Sexitana.

CD Almuñécar City fielded a team made up of academy players as they had a really important presentation game the following evening. In fact, the Almuñécar players ranged from just 15 years old, and most were around 17.

The other teams clearly fielded their strongest sides, which ended with the 3rd division side Motril winning the tournament.

We would like to offer some insight into how a three-way final works… however, our football ignorance in this matter is seemingly endless! Save to say that Almuñécar played the Sexitana lads for 45 minutes going down 2-0. Then Almuñécar played Motril for 45 minutes and lost 4-0. Finally Sexitana returned to the pitch and lost 2-0 to Motril, giving them the cup. Confused? Well, it sort of worked out, but had us all in the cheap seats guessing what was going on.

In summary: This was a stern test for the youngsters, but to their credit they didn’t give up and showed moments of great promise. However, they were, on far too many occasions, just muscled off the ball by older, stronger players. With just four or five of the seniors in the team, we could have given both sides a much better game. Our very young goalkeeper showed great promise, making some superb close range stops and was vocal to the very end encouraging the other lads to keep their heads up.

On the ball, we looked pretty good, and even going forward we showed occasional promise. However, in the end, Motril especially were telegraphing a lot of our passes and always seemed to just get a toe in to stop any Almuñécar progression.

My son Jack tried his hardest to be supportive but his thoughts in the second game summed things up, “Daddy, they really need to get the ball!”… out of the mouths of babes and all that.

(News: Costa Tropical, Granada, Andalucia)