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| Surprised Viking back into top flight |
In the end, all the permutations in an insanely tight Division 1a evaporated for Viking North Utsire right as kickoff on the final day of Season 48 approached. With the Utsirans in the playoff spot but their final fixture being against old rivals Breezly 46, who sat level with them just one goal behind and with several other clubs lurking just over their shoulder, all manner of things were anticipated to go down before the final whistles blew across the division. However, when it became apparent around an hour and a half before match time that Breezly had turned up on Utsire without manager MarkRowe in attendance, the tension went out of the atmosphere at Dogger Bank as if punctured with a fork.
Viking still took things a little cautiously in the first 45 minutes, as if anticipating their visitors to pull something out of the bag anyway -- after all, this is a team VelvetAndroid's side had never beaten in seven meetings, despite all of those being competitively-fought encounters resulting in four draws and three single-goal defeats. With news filtering through that Dynamo Chicken Kiev were leading against next-nearest challengers Hibees Redskins, though, Viking seemed to gather themselves, and with the sole shot of the opening half Ingolf Kvalvik fired them into the lead on 31 minutes. After the break they began to play with more fluency, and eventually the sadly rudderless visitors caved in during the final dozen minutes of the campaign: teenage forward Viktor Austrheim headed his maiden goal, top scorer David Austrheim promptly notched his 13th of the season, then in stoppage time Kvalvik bagged his second of the game to complete a regrettably hollow victory and confirm Viking's spot in the playoff for the top flight.
This sent them to the Xpert Arena on Wednesday to go up against Fantasy Factory, who themselves had only narrowly emerged triumphant from a similarly chaotic race in the parallel Division 1b. The Coloradans looked the stronger side by some margin however and dominated the opening exchanges at pitch #5 of the Arena's stadium megacomplex -- yet against the run of play it was the Utsirans who sneaked into the lead when Haakon Austrheim's 24th-minute freekick unexpectedly eluded opposing goalkeeper Aldaír Garrido. More remarkably still, when Viking had their second shot of the game fourteen minutes later, it also found itself nestling in the back of the Factory net, veteran midfielder Toralf Austrheim breaking the offside trap and coolly slotting past Garrido to double the advantage.
It proved vital, as FF cranked up the power in the second half and Oliverio Aznar made the inevitable breakthrough shortly before the hour mark when he fired past Jens Hovland -- one of several 'junior' players VNU fielded, an apparent mark of how little they expected to win this playoff. Try as they might, however, the Americans could not find that equaliser, meaning that when the final whistle went 34-year old Toralf's 87th career goal proved the winning one. For a player who had joined as the first real product of the Utsiran youth academy 15 seasons earlier as a moody 19-year-old misfit, to send his local team into the Ultimate League top flight for the second time on his 300th appearance is a remarkable achievement.
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