Following 18 years of Open Age events and 11 years of Veterans tournaments across almost 150 tournament weekends, it's only natural that we progressed to Super Veterans! The tournament would comprise teams aged 45+ with two players aged 40-44 permitted in the squad. We are very lucky that many teams will have joined us on the journey from Open Age a decade or two ago and reaching Super Veterans status (although I'm sure none of us are enjoying the clock ticking over each birthday as the hairlines recede!)

Porto was a brand new destination for us which seemed fitting to host the brand new Super-Veterans tournament. Portugal's second city proved to be a great choice in what is a fantastic city and we had an excellent venue to play host to the day's festivities.

We kicked off with two experienced teams in our events as Scotland's Peebles All Stars kicked off against England's Los Amblos. We will preview each team in more detail as we progress with this report. Ross Pickburn will go down in the history books as the first man to score a SuperVets goal in our tournaments as his first half strike put Peebles All Stars 1-0 up.

After the change of ends Peebles All Stars would extend their lead with Andriy Moryev putting his side 2-0 ahead. Defensively the Scottish team was robust and they kept a clean sheet as they ran out 2-0 victors to pick-up all 3 points.

It is not often teams from the same club meet in eurofootballfives competition but, when they do, these derby matches often have a strange atmosphere – sometimes the games can lack a little intensity or sometimes the games can have a bit too much intensity with players determined not to lose to their tour-mates.

Usually, these games happen in the knock-out phase but with this game coming so early in the tournament it would be even more strange and perhaps even feel like a warm-up or training session. However, bragging rights were at stake for the rest of the Porto tour and beyond. 

When Bure Park Seniors and Bure Park Old Boys met in game 3 of the SuperVets it was the first time they'd met face-to-face in our tournaments since 2013 when they met at the Plate Semi-Final stage of the 2013 Krakow Trophy. Under different names, Team Karma lost 3-0 to Saga Louts with 2 goals from Simon Dearing grabbing the headlines. Saga Louts came so close to taking the Plate title that day as they lost the final on penalties.

11 years on, Simon Dearing was in action again for the Bure Park Seniors team. This time he was on the losing side though with the headlines going to Matt Johnson. Johnson's goal was the only thing to separate the two sides as Bure Park Old Boys defeated the Seniors 1-0.

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