We were down to our final 4 teams in the Plate competition. The first Semi-Final would see Club Esportiu Llefia versus John Laing. This promised to be a high quality encounter – Club Esportiu Llefia had so far won 5, drawn 1 and lost 2 today with 27 goals for and 6 against. The Spanish team were the top scorers in the tournament up to this point. John Laing had won 4 drawn 2, lost 2 with 10 goals for and 5 against. If John Laing could keep it tight they were in with a shout. Club Esportiu Llefia had shown if they were allowed to build up momentum they could punish you heavily.

The Plate competition had been an extremely tight one so far with 3 of the 4 games requiring penalty shoot-outs. The Club Esportiu Llefia game was an outlier as they ran out 7-0 winners. They had showed in the Cup competition last year that they could move through the gears in the latter stages of the tournament – they were doing so again here.

It was Club Esportiu Llefia who drew first blood. Alfred Jimenez De Andres scored 9 goals on his way to the top goalscorer award last year and his 11 th of this year's tournament put his team 1-0 up in the Semi-Final. Cristian Barco scored his first of the tournament to make it 2-0 to the home side and John Laing were heading out.

It was farewell to John Laing for the day but we thank them for attending their first eurofootballfives.com tournament and especially to Tony Cahill who put in a great effort into making it happen. The consolation for John Laing leaving us at this stage was a quick dart to the Camp Nou to catch the tail end of the Barcelona v Deportivo La Coruna game.

The second Semi-Final was Leek High Boys versus Skackney FC. Who could join Club Esportiu Llefia in the Plate Final?

These two teams were incredibly evenly matched based upon their record today. If we had ranked all the teams at the end of the group phase Leek High Boys would have ranked 13th and Skackney FC would have ranked 15th. They both finished fourth in their group and only a point separated them in the group phase. Leek High Boys had kept the most clean sheets. Skackney FC had the most goals scored and least goals conceded overall.

Skackney FC were blazing a trail for Kiwi teams in eurofootballfives.com competition. Admittedly they were only the second team to compete in our tournaments to represent the silver fern but they were the first team to reach a knock-out stage and were one win away from a first European final. If they were to achieve it, they would be only the third non-European team to reach a final after Argentina (Arg) in the 2014 Budapest Fives and Quayaquil 100% (Ecu) at the 2011 Mallorca Tournament (both finished runners-up).

With the game underway, Skackney FC made the initial breakthrough through Nikora Walters. He claimed the crucial equalizer in the QF and now had a SF goal too. Leek High Boys had claimed all their wins by leading from the front and so this would be a real test for them to retain their status in the tournament. They were back on level terms thanks to Shaun Fernyough's first of the day – what a time to get it! They then completed their first comeback victory when Tommy Coates took his tally to the day for 5 and the English team had won it, 2-1.

Skackney FC had performed well on debut and on another day could easily have made the final. On another day, they could easily have qualified for the Cup instead of the Plate but such was the high level of competition today it was not to be. We hope they return to have a crack at being our first non-European winners.