The No. 5 Varsity Blues men’s soccer team defeated the No. 6 Western Mustangs 3-1 in OUA semi-final action on Saturday, November 6 at York Stadium.

With the win, the Blues advance to the OUA gold-medal match tomorrow at 2 p.m., where they will take on the winner of the second semifinal of the day between the York Lions and Ryerson Rams.

It looked as though the Varsity Blues had gotten on the board first just four minutes into the game, when Mario Kovacevic (Woodbridge, Ont.) fired a shot into the net off a corner by Ezequiel Lubocki (Winnipeg). However, the referee ruled that Kovacevic had interfered with Western goalie Andrew Murdoch (Burlington, Ont.) and the goal was disallowed.

The Varsity Blues finally got on the board in the 42nd minute when Dylan Bams (Fanny Bay, B.C.) put the ball behind Murdoch after a pass from Darragh McGee (Donegal, Ireland).

The score remained 1-0 at the half and stayed the same well into the second before another goal was scored. In the 72nd minute, Western’s Paul D’Amario (Vaughan, Ont.) hauled down a Toronto player inside the box to award a penalty shot to the Varsity Blues and Alex Raphael (East York, Ont.) capitalized with an easy goal to make the score 2-0.

Seven minutes later the Varsity Blues scored again on a gorgeous goal by Kovacevic to give the Varsity Blues an insurmountable three-goal lead.

The Mustangs got on the board in the 84th minute on a goal by Jagger Hassan (London, Ont.) but by then it was too late to mount a serious comeback.

Bams was named the player of the game for Toronto, while Eric Amato (Toronto) received the honour for Western.