A goal in extra time from Valpak's captain David Jones clinched the victory in the fifth annual six-aside football competition for mixed-gender teams, held at the University of Northampton on Friday.
This year's contest saw 26 teams competing for the title Waste World Cup Champions, with Valpak winning through the knock-out stages against the likes of consultancy Mouchel Parkman, London-based Bywaters Waste Management and Blackburn firm Neales Waste Management.
Mr Jones said: “It's absolutely awesome to finally bring the cup home after three years. We have improved each year and as captain I feel it could now be time to retire!”
Fellow scorer Simon Forsdyck added: “The best team won it, and it was the whole team that did it. This is a great day for Valpak.”
The winning Valpak side also included Colm Murphy, Emily Swift, Harry Wells, Trevor Yong, Gemma Hoffman, Josela Renardson, James Beard and George Brown.
Knockout
Despite some quality players under captain and chairman Barry Bolton, Enfield-based ACM Waste Management missed out on the trophy for another year. The ACM team had come through the knockout stages beating sides including the Environmental Services Association, REgenerist and, in the semi-final, a solid team from metal recycling company Sims Group.
But the final saw ACM going a goal down before scoring an equaliser to send the game into extra time. However, Valpak's eventual winner came too late in the game for ACM to turn around.
Elsewhere, the competition saw another good challenge put up by Grundon, who knocked SITA out in the second round before ultimately succumbing to Sims Group in the Quarter Finals. And, Biffa also won through to the Quarter Finals after defeating Defra in the second round, before being beaten by Neales.
Crossbar Challenge
In the Crossbar Challenge competition, run by sponsors REgenerist alongside the Waste World Cup, individual footballers competed for a cash prize by attempting to hit the crossbar with a shot from the halfway line.
This year's Crossbar Challenge was won by Chris Povey of the SITA team.
This year's Waste World Cup tournament was sponsored by REgenerist, the waste and recycling software from Cedilla Systems. It was also supported by Abitibi-Consolidated Recycling Europe, Reclaimed Appliances and Taylor.
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