Relief as tournament lacks fighting spirit

RED Star Bengal FC walked away with the silverware at the Oldham Youth Forum tournament.

The competition, which originally featured 140 players, was cancelled at the quarter-final stage when players from Coppice and Westwood came to blows during a match.

But after talks between the organisers and Oldham Community Leisure, which hires out the Grange Astroturf, it was decided to allow the competition to continue at the same venue.

But this time there were no sore losers.

The winners grabbed a convincing 3-0 victory against Al-Katol in the finals.

Shafizur Rahman, forum chairman, said: “We had talks with Oldham Community Leisure and we spoke to the players so they knew what was going on. It was a really good atmosphere and we had no problems at all.

“OCL have been great, helping us with the organisation and we are talking about ways to set up a partnership between them and ourselves.”