The Barry Maney Limestone Coast Premier League preseason carnival was played on Saturday, with all teams competing.
After a series of round robin matches, the event was cut short after power issues at Casadio Park.
The outage impacted pitch lights, which meant the grand final of the women’s and men’s carnival could not be played.
The league decided the winner of both carnivals would be the side that finished top of the ladder after the rounds.
This ruling allowed International to take home the trophy in the men’s carnival while Apollo was named the winner in the women’s carnival.
Men’s:
In the men’s competition, champions Inter had a dominant day, finishing undefeated.
The black and blue’s first game was against Gambier Centrals, with the host taking the win and the clean sheet with a final score of 2-0.
International’s second game was a bit tougher against Blue Lake.
Inter still got the win, conceding two goals but getting the job done with three goals of their own.
In the next game against Naracoorte, Inter finished with another clean sheet and took the game 1-0.
The match against Apollo was another tough one as both teams shared the points with a 1-1 draw.
Inter’s final game of the carnival was against Millicent where they finished on a high with a 7-0 win.
Coach Tony D’Agostino said he was pleased with his team’s performance and his players’ overall fitness.
D’Agostino said all of the games were tough and competitive and they all ended up being close competition, with games going right down to the wire.
“All the other games were really close which makes the competition for this year really good,” he said.
“I think it’s going to be one of those years where anybody can drop points anywhere.”
D’Agostino used the carnival to get some match fitness into his players and to try some different strategies heading into Round 1.
The veteran coach also gave playing time to some younger players to see how they will measure up against tougher competition.
Women’s:
In the women’s competition Apollo took home the trophy, finishing the day undefeated and becoming back to back winners.
In their first game against Millicent, Millicent played with eight on the pitch for the first half before Apollo lent Millicent three players in the second half.
The game ended in a 2-2 draw.
Coach Paul Prentice said that his side was lucky to have the end result as a draw.
In their next game against Gambier Centrals, Apollo also lent them one player for the game.
Apollo won 4-0 in this game and Prentice thought his side played much better than the first game as they began to find some good patterns of play during the match.
In their match against Inter they came away with a 1-0 win, finishing the day with wins over Naracoorte and Blue Lake to sit atop the ladder.
Prentice said the carnival was an overall success and was impressed by the play of one of his juniors who has moved up from U/14s to U/16s this year, scoring four goals in the carnival.
Prentice was also pleased with the performance of the new players to the team.
Apollo had a squad of 17 players on the day and Prentice said that he would have been disappointed if they did not win.
Prentice said he was not disappointed the grand final was cancelled due to him believing his side was the best on the day.
“The fact the final was not able to go ahead was not a great disappointment to me, I think we demonstrated that we were the strongest squad over the day,” he said.
Prentice said he did not think the results from the carnival were a gauge of how the season will play out and that he mainly used the carnival to get his team playing together.
