Football tournament in honour of tragic Sheffield student Rio

The 6th annual Rio memorial tournament took place recently in memory of a former University of Sheffield student.
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The event held at Goodwin Sports Centre was to honour Neil Bennett, also known as ‘Rio’ who tragically took his own life in July 2012 aged 33. Neil studied Law at the University of Sheffield between 1998 and 2001 and was a regular on the football pitches.

The sun shining made for a lovely day for spectators, but it certainly made it hard going for everybody who played with literally gallons of water being consumed on the day. Five teams made up of Neil’s friends, family and colleagues from across the country came together to battle it out in the charity tournament.

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In the Plate competition, Geckos emerged victorious, beating Neil’s former work colleagues from Nationwide 2-0 in the final. In the Champions Cup, after an open match, Neil’s old team Sexual Chocolate ran out 2-0 victors over Goodwin to retain the Neil Bennett memorial cup which they have now won for the last two years.

A spokesman said: “Overall it was a fantastic day with plenty of good football on display and lots of aching legs by the end. Big thank you to everybody who played and everyone who supplied raffle prizes and bought raffle tickets and to the Nottingham House pub which hosted the presentation.

“Overall we managed to raise over £500 for charity which was fantastic. The money raised will go to CALM, a suicide bereavement charity and Children with Cancer.”