Papas refused to make any excuses for the loss and said the Knights were impressed by the host association’s wealth of young talent.

AWFA started with a 4-5-1 formation and, with the scores deadlocked at nil-all at half-time, pressed for victory in the second-half with Jarrod Herzina and Caleb Martin finding the back of the net.

“Full credit to the Albury-Wodonga boys as they played really well,” Papas said.

“It was a good game and, although we lost, we still took some positives out of it.

“There is a lot of young talent around here and we aren’t going to make excuses.”

Martin scored the decider with only 10 minutes remaining and AWFA coaches Scott Kidd and Pedro Afonso were forced to sweat in the dying minutes as the Knights threatened to equalise.

Kidd was reluctant to single out players in the victory with him preferring to highlight the team’s versatility with Miron Andronicos and Ryan Giles playing in defence and Daniel Millynn at left-back.

“It certainly gives our league a lot of credibility,” Kidd said.

“We set ourselves a couple of goals during the match and the first one was being level after 20 minutes and we just took it from there.

“All the boys put their hands up and were absolutely spent after the match.

“We had a lot of 17 and 18-year-olds playing and I think the Knights were fairly surprised by our performance.

“Many of our players played out of position and they all acquitted themselves brilliantly.”

The Knights, who finished runner-up to Altona Magic in last year’s premier league premiership, were without several key players but still had the nucleus of their backline on the park.

AWFA young gun Zac Walker played a lone hand in attack for most of the match, while goalkeeper Josh Fluss stood up well under pressure with several timely saves and Brendan O’Connell lent invaluable support.

“The Knights have come up here before and blown away club sides early and we didn’t want to let them get in front,” Kidd said.

“Everyone worked to a plan and we got the result.”