After last year naming their teams Cheetahs, Panthers and Pumas, for reasons best known to themselves Penge Family Church entered their teams in the League's 2010 Five-A-Side Competition as Penge Bananas, Mangos and Pineapples!
So it was that, on a far from tropical September day, these three teams gathered, together with 25 others, at Powerleague Croydon for a tournament organised on a format similar to the World Cup, with first phase groups, although unseeded, picked on the basis that no team could play a team from its own club until the later knock-out phase at the earliest.
As it turned out, the Mangos and Pineapples proved to be slightly under-ripe, failing to finish high enough in their groups to progress to the main competition and ending up in the Consolation Plate where they met each other in the semi-final, with the Pineapples crushing the Mangos by a score of 3-1 before beating All Saints Peckham by 2-0 in the Plate final.
Meanwhile Penge Bananas comfortably outskinned the three other teams to top their first round group, then overpowered Emmanuel Lightning and Newgen in the knock-out phase, before pipping last year's Plate Winners, Oakhall in a semi-final which remained goal-less and had to be decided on penalties.
Penalties were also needed to decide the outcome of the other semi-final in which Lewin Sports eventually beat valiant League newcomers St John's Danson after the game had finished level at 1-1.
Off court opinion probably had Lewin installed as favourites, but not unusually the pundits were proved to be wrong as the Bananas slipped into a 2-0 lead and went on to a somewhat surprisingly comfortable win to take the title for the first time in their club's history and secure a unique 5-A-Side double.