The beauty of soccer is that matches are generally decided by a moment of brilliance or a moment of folly, and on Sunday, that later was the case for Oakville's Blue Devils FC.
In the early match, the Men would go down to Guelph United after dominating play at the first 15 minutes. A lofted ball into the box would be the Blue Devils undoing on two separate occasions in a 7-minute span. Jace Kotsopolous and Tomaz Skublak we're the beneficiaries of failed clearances on airborne balls.
Kotsopolous dispatched an insurance marker via penalty to put the Blue Devils away. It was the cherry on of what has likely been an MVP campaign.
The club dominated possession throughout the match and was snake-bitten through two halves. They finally got themselves on the board through team-leading goal-scorer Leaford Allen, but his extra time and effort would be too little, too late, as the game would end with a 3-1 final score.
Guelph becomes the first team since the Blue Devils to win League1 Ontario's Men's Division in their maiden season.
Guelph United earned the right to play in next year's Canadian Championship. As it's known to supporters, "The Voyageurs Cup" is an annual tournament that features the third Division Champions from Ontario and Quebec pitted against Canada's 3 MLS Clubs and eight Canadian Premier League sides.
The second act of the League1 double feature saw the Blue Devils women taking on arch-rivals, the Woodbridge Strikers.
The Blue Devils were the early aggressors, and Laura Twidle would try to take measures into her own hands. She struck a crossbar in the fourth minute from a long-range shot from outside the box. Woodbridge would return fire only 2 minutes later and Striker player's swerving freekick fooled Elisa Lapadula and that would be all the Strikers would need as they sat back on their lead for the rest of the game, absorbing Blue Devils pressure. 17-year-old Patricya Kozak would come close to tying things up on another shot from a distance that whistled just over the bar, but that was as close as the women would come.
The Woodbridge Strikers will go on to face PLSQ Champions AS Blainsville in Women's Inter-Provincial Championship.