MORE than 1,000 people filled Malvern Town’s Langland Stadium during the first Sunday of the Mercian Festival Youth Football League finals.

The prestigious event brought together some of Worcestershire’s best junior football sides as they all battled it out for silverware in a day of competition.

There was a mixture of girls and boys teams taking part from u9s to u15s in seven different finals.

An 11-a-side finals day will be held on Sunday, May 3.

LEIGH & BRANSFORD BADGERS u9s 0, NEWTOWN SPORTS JNRS u9s 3.

NEWTOWN and Leigh & Bransford put on a classic cup final with the teams playing attractive passing football. Initially both sides struggled to penetrate each others defences.

But some neat passing between Lewis Hill and Adam Dickenson allowed Jack Wickett to go closest for Newtown with a shot just wide.

With Harrison Smith now creating space in midfield, Newtown went ahead when a clever pass picked out Jai Bains on the right and he surged through to tuck the ball into the net. In the second-half the Badgers began to push forward looking for an equaliser but they were caught on the break by a pass that split their defence. Josh Senter latched onto the through ball and drilled it into the goal from the edge of the box.

Having set up the first two goals Eli Bray made it three with an excellent individual goal.

Despite the setbacks Badgers never gave up and were only denied a goal by some dogged defending from Lewis Rodway and Senan McCullough, who was deservedly named man-of-the match.