BEFORE a crowd of 30,000 spectators at Wembley Stadium, Avondale School's fine season form continued in their semi-final of the Addidas All England Finals by beating Midlands champions Grangehurst from Coventry 1-0. The goal came from Gary Hillman.

The second semi-final was decided on penalty kicks with St Mary's of Hendon beating Cardinal Newman of Oxford.

The final was a battle royal, with St Mary's scoring first to lead 1-0 at half time. St Mary's scored again on the restart, causing Avondale to go on all out attack and scoring through Gary Hillman.

It was all Avondale after this, going close and hitting the crossbar with the St Mary's keeper making several excellent saves to deny them a result. The final score was St Mary's 2, Avondale 1. These two goals were the first conceded by Avondale in the competition.

On returning to the domestic league competition in Darwen, Avondale were only able to complete half their league games, scoring 37 without reply and still finishing with enough points to share the league title with St Cuthbert's.

The team members were: Curtis Aspden, Adam Dowd, Ross Hawthornthwaite, Zac Jones, Ashley Kendall, Gary Hillman (captain), Michael Kelly and Thomas Molloy. Coaches were Gary Foster and Mark Jones.

The players, pictured on the bench at Wembley, received trophies inscribed with Wembley's Twin Towers plus sponsors' gifts.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.