Richard Alibon have become ‘history-makers’ according to teacher Stefan Scott after his side were crowned Barking & Dagenham Post Schools’ Cup champions.
The Dagenham-based school pulled off a narrow 1-0 victory against Roding Cannington in the final at Robert Clack School thanks to a strike from Shay Scott late on.
Scott says he is pleased with how far his squad have come in the space of a year and revealed head teacher Andrew Fullagar put the pressure on him to bring home the silverware.
"In the back of my mind for me it was 'become history-makers'. I don't think they understood it until up to now, but we've done that," said Scott.
"The last couple of years we've run it close getting into the knockout stages, but never managed to kick on, whereas we did this time round.
"The head teacher kind of put a bit of pressure on me by saying 'this is the year we've got to do it', so I said I'll try my hardest."
Shay Scott fired a rebound into the top right corner from an original effort from Frankie Hills with 10 minutes left in the match.
And PE teacher Scott was quick to praise opponents Roding Cannington for pushing them all the way to finish.
"My heart was racing the whole game to be fair, the energy through this side, all year since we started training has been tremendous.
"The work ethic, the will to win and not lose is just great.
"The final was closer than we might have thought, but a final is a final, and it could have gone either way.
"We played Roding in the group stage in a game which was just as tough, and to be honest big compliments to Roding, they have done fantastic.
"They pushed us to our limits and we had to dig deep within ourselves to see what we had and they all proved it."
Richard Alibon moved the ball around swifty and had a good passing game plan, with Scott adding: "The football all year has been like that, and I said to the boys and girl that I couldn't wait for them to get onto a 3G pitch because it would just help us a lot.
"I couldn't be prouder as they reap the rewards of it."
Richard Alibon: Frankie Hills, Kayla Grain, Reshay Moise, Williams Abiodun, Airidas Golambeckis, Shay Scott, Danny Serban, Abdulmueez Usman, Vinny Tidd, Frankie Gruzinski, Ryan Birch.
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