That escalated quickly. To put it mildly.

The intensity level picked up in the finals of the fifth annual Old-timers Men's Invitational Soccer Tournament held on the weekend.

Phil Jackson sniped a hat trick to lead Team E to a 4-2 win over Team C in the final game of the tournament, hosted by Whitehorse Rapids, at the Canada Games Centre yesterday.

"In the end, both teams wanted to win, and you could see by the way it was played that no one was holding back,” said Chris Stacey, Team E captain and tournament organizer.

Five Whitehorse-based teams, including a coed team, and a team in from Juneau competed over the weekend.

The majority of players take part in the Whitehorse Rapids Over 35 Men's Soccer League throughout the winter.

Stacey said the intensity level of league games is milder.

"But when it all comes to the end and there's that desire to be the champions, everybody notches up their game,” he said.

"(The final) was heated because they were two evenly matched teams. We all know each other so well, because we play throughout the season. Everyone has certain strengths – some of them physical, some of them technical – so we are well matched and we knew it was going to be really tight.”

Tempers boiled over in the second half, with players jostling around the net followed by a few instances where two players went clattering into the boards.

The referee had a word and dished out a couple of yellow cards.

Stacey said the players love the intensity so long as it doesn't get out of control – or take away from the game.

The referees may look at it differently, he added.

"We shouldn't take the focus away from the skill of the players; our focus there was to try to shut down Justin (Carre) and Hiro (Miyahama), who are very slick players.

They were our number one priorities, and we didn't do it perfectly; they always find a way through,” Stacey said.

Miyahama had one of Team C's two goals and Carre always looked threatening with the ball at his feet.

"It got wild, it got crazy ... it was much more intense than I thought it would be,” Carre said. "Some tempers are not checked, and it goes a little bit too far. But I like a good competitive game in the final for sure.

"For our team, I thought we had a good bunch of guys; everyone played their role well, and it was a good game, good tournament for our team.”

The two sides met in the round robin, when Team E took that game 4-3.

"The stakes weren't as high, so it wasn't as intense,” Carre said. "But it followed the same pattern, where they closed down some of our best players, man-marking, putting one or two players on them and they actually got some goals, which really were defensive errors, and it happened in the finals.

"Take away those defensive errors and it would have been really, really close games.”

Carre and company won two, lost one and drew one in the round robin.

Team E lost their first game 7-3 to Juneau but regrouped to go undefeated the rest of the way.

Stacey said his team thought the Alaskans would be road weary following their trip.

"That win put them on a high, us on a low, but we managed to come back from it,” Stacey said. "You see that in the whole tournament; another team started with two wins and then ended up with two more losses and ended up in fifth.”

Juneau has entered a team in the tournament for the five years it's been running, and won the championship three years ago.

Juneau captain Troy Martin said his team's motivation has changed since the first few years, mostly because the team always meets good people and always has a good time in the Yukon capital.

"At some point it kind of stopped being about playing the games as much as coming up here and making a good long weekend trip out of it,” Martin said.

"It's gotten more competitive over the years. The first couple years Whitehorse had more teams so their players were more spread out, and now they've come down to four or five teams, so they've gotten a lot more of the better players on the teams and it's raised the competition quite a bit.”

The majority of players on the Juneau team play pick-up soccer in the Alaska capital, though there is a competitive league for younger players, Martin noted.

This year, Juneau finished with two wins, two losses and one draw, losing 5-2 to Team B for fourth place, one place lower than they finished last year.

This time around they barely made it, being forced to charter two planes to Skagway after the Juneau ferry was docked.

Martin noted that his team's determination to make it came down to a "universal mojo factor.” Or something.

The banquet and the nature of the tournament helped too, he added.

"It's part of the reason why we come up here. The Whitehorse guys, the organizers, do a great job and they always treat us really well, make us feel welcome, and we appreciate it.”

Stacey said Juneau comes "always with a good standard,” and noted that the Alaskans have failed to win it over the past two years in part because they're missing key players.

"And I think the standard of the Whitehorse Over-35 League is getting better,” Stacey said.

In Sunday's other game, Team D downed the Coed Team 3-2 in extra time in the fifth and sixth place match.