VMSL Week 8 Round-up: Croatia loss leaves Rino’s Tigers on their own at the top as Guildford get their first win of the season

The top and bottom of the VMSL Premier Division standings saw some key results this past weekend, which left Rino’s Tigers in sole possession of first place, while Campo Atletico remain pointless and becoming further adrift at the bottom.

Week 8 kicked off in Coquitlam as Metro-Ford Wolves staged a second half comeback to shock Croatia SC 2-1. Heading into the match as joint leaders, David Malamura fired Croatia ahead in the 11th minute and that’s how things stayed till half time. Adam Jones got the Wolves back on level terms five minutes after the restart, and the former SFU man grabbed all three points for the home side with six minutes remaining, sending Croatia tumbling down to third place in the standings.

Croatia’s loss allowed West Van to move up to second following their 1-0 win at Club Inter EDC Burnaby. Andrew Milne’s 30th minute goal was the sole difference between the two teams, with the only blot for the Amblesiders coming in the last minute when Lloyd Massey picked up West Van’s third red card in the last two matches.

The last match on the Friday was the Surrey derby between CCB LFC United and BCT Rovers Tigers United up at Newton. This was another close affair, with just one goal in the game, coming for CCB from Ryan McCurdy in the 34th minute.

The win sees CCB move up to fifth place in the standings, while last year’s champs, Rovers Tigers, now sit 11 points behind the leaders, albeit with two games in hand after their win at the Nationals. If they’re going to make it back to back triumphs, they can’t afford too many more hiccups from here on in.

Those leaders are Rino’s Tigers, who took sole possession of first place after a narrow, closer than expected 1-0 victory over the fellow in-form side NVFC Norvan. The only goal of the came early, with TSS Rovers player Erik Edwardson (pictured below) doing the damage four minutes in, grabbing his seventh goal of the season.

Rino’s have three of the top four scorers in the Premier Division this season, racking up 32 goals in their first eight matches, but they’ll be without leading scorer Declan Rodriguez this weekend, after the Whitecaps Residency alumni was sent off ten minutes into the second half of the win over Norvan.

The action at the bottom of the table saw a couple of big wins for a pair of strugglers, but Campo Atletico were the big losers, going down 6-2 at home to fellow relegation battlers Richmond FC Hibernian at Burnaby Lake.

The pair were evenly matched for the first hour before the visitors turned it on in the later stages and ran rampant. Logan Hooper gave Richmond a 12th minute lead, which they took into half time. Their lead lasted just two minutes after the restart with Shayan Eftekhari getting Campo back on level terms. Richmond retook the lead in the 54th minute through Miguel Michelena, but Zachari Ouariti-Zerouali restored the parity just three minutes later. Then Richmond took over.

Hibernian hit four in the last half hour, with Matthew Legge putting Richmond back into the lead in the 63rd minute and Hamzah Gurung giving them a two goal lead four minutes later. Gurung made it five past Campo when he grabbed his second of the match in the 83rd minute, before Damon Couling rounded off the scoring and made it six of the best for Richmond in the last minute, giving them their second win of the season.

Campo were one of two teams heading into Week 8 still in search of their first points of the season. They remain that way after their latest loss, but are now the only ones in that position following Guildford FC’s first win of the campaign over Pegasus SFC at Newton on Saturday night.

Eric Ray had put Pegasus ahead on the half hour mark, before Gurinder Pannu tied things up four minutes before half time. The winning goal came from Dipinder Gill in the 62nd minute to give Guildford the 2-1 victory, but they finished the match with ten men after Harneiv Jagpal was sent off for a second booking in the last minute.

Those results leave the VMSL Premier standings looking as follows after Week 8:

You can get all of the results and standings across the seven VMSL divisions, and this week’s fixtures, on VMSLsoccer.com.