The Northern Qld Youth Mens have returned home to Cairns as National Champions!! after a long hard week of very intense Futsal action at the Australian Futsal Associations National Championships in Sydney, the Northern Youth players proved to be the best in Australia taking the title from last years winners Victoria in a very exciting Final.

The game started at a very fast pace with the Victorians attacking at every opportunity threw their target player David King, and after 8 minutes they finally broke threw the Northern defence and went one goal up, but the Northern outfit stuck to their game plan of putting pressure on the raining champions and equalised with a brilliant set play threw Shay Douglas, in the second half the Northerners continued the way the had finished the first and went ahead after 5 minutes with an attacking play and Douglas scored his second, the pressure was starting to show on the Victorians as they tried to press on the Northerners but a brilliant solo effort from Matthew Murphy saw him slot the ball to Peter Lansana that was free in front of gaol, and he made no mistake and put the Northerners 2 goals up, the Victorians then pushed forward with 3 attacking players and managed to slot one past the the injured keeper Michael Schmidt, this saw Kieran Pates come on for the Northerns and he puled off some excellent saves to keep the Victorians at bay, the final goal came from keeper Pates when he saw the Victorian keeper off his line and slotted the ball in the top left hand corner, this saw the Northern Qld finish the game on top 4 goals to 2 and 2 players making the Australian All Star team.

The other Northern Qld teams that competed at the Nationals also performed extremely well with 5 teams out of the 7 teams finishing in the top 3 in their round games, this is a huge effort from all Players, Coaches and Managers involved as this is the first time Northern Qld has done this well at a National Championships, unfortunately out of the 5 that made the Semi Finals only the Youth men made it threw, never the less it was a huge effort from everyone and it shows that we are up there with the best across the country.

Under 10 boys finished 1st in the group, but lost to Qld Metro 2 – 3 in the Semi Final (Callam Gebbes made the All Star team)
Under 12 Boys finished 2nd in the group, but lost to Qld City 2 – 5 i n the Semi Final
Under 13 Boys finished 3rd in the group, but lost to Qld Metro 2 – 4 in the Semi Final (Cameron Canning made the All Star team)
Under 14 Boys finished 3rd in the group, bit lost to WA 6 – 9 in the Semi Final (Darcy McCormack made the All Star team)
Open Women finished 7th in the group
Open Men finished 6th in the group
Youth Men CHAMPIONS Northern Qld 4, Victoria 2 (Michael Schmidt and Josh DeNittis made the All Star team)