While we recapped the GPSD Championship matches in the last entry that saw FC Portlandia lose a tough battle to SDFC EastBurn and North End United lost a bitter affair to Ronler Hacres after beating them earlier that week just before the Thanksgiving holiday, official match reports were submitted for the NEU matches.

You can read more about the bizarre circumstances that caused North End United to have to play a previously cancelled match against Ronler Hacres under rather nasty conditions and win 6 to 0 convincingly to set up a rematch on Sunday November 20 between the same clubs for the GPSD Division 4 title.  The November 17 match was played under nasty conditions with driving rain and sleet but NEU gained an advantage with Ronler only fielding nine field players for the affair.  Joel Weaklund and Marcus Nelson scored braces in the second half while Allen Cook and Shiloh Rodriguez added single tallies for a convincing 6 to 0 win to propel them into the championship match undefeated.

Under slightly better conditions on November 20, the same two clubs met for the Division 4 title with better numbers as both sides fielded full teams.  Under a warning from the official to not let things get out of control in the first half, both teams played to a scoreless draw going into the break.  Unfortunately, strange circumstances led to a Ronler Hacres free kick to put them up by one that also led to the ejection of Rem Evert, although it’s still unclear what happened to lead to the call.  The player that drew the first free kick for Ronler then used a series of flying elbows to score a second tally, but NEU wasn’t going to give up.  Marcus Nelson got them back within one, but tensions flared between NEU and the official because of a delayed restart.  The final whistle blew moments later before NEU could earn the leveling goal, but it didn’t put a damper on a successful campaign that saw all sorts of unusual events.  Congratulations to NEU for a spectacular fall run and it will be interesting to see if they can repeat their efforts in the upcoming spring season.

We’ll post more about FC Portlandia’s final championship match once the official match report is available, but as with NEU, it was a hugely successful season for the boys in purple as they earned promotion to GPSD Division for spring 2012.