The Premmy Files – Season’s Finished, Shout Out To The Champs Auckland City
Never mind, it’s all over. It probably had to be. The Premiership may only be a domestic competition but it’s a domestic competition based all over the country which means plenty of air travel and considering the majority of Covid-19 cases in Aotearoa so far have been brought in from overseas that makes airports places you’d really rather avoid.
Plus with grassroots footy postponed across the country there’s also a responsibility from the national league to set the tone, as well as by far the most important aspect of all this which is that the players can’t honestly have felt they were all in on the football side of things with so much else going on around the world. The Premier League, La Liga, the Bundesliga... none of them are playing so it would have been weird for the Premmy stuff to keep on rolling along like we’re immune over here or something – this thing’s only gonna get worse before it gets better, might as well get out in front of it. Not to mention the laser focus that the overseas gambling degenerates would have had on one of the few remaining footy leagues that would’ve still been going. Here’s NZF’s official announcement...
NZ Football: “The 2019/20 ISPS Handa Premiership season has been concluded after 18 match weeks, out of concerns for team and community safety due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Auckland City, who lead with 37 points, have been declared champions and awarded a place in the OFC Champions League for next season, along with second-placed Team Wellington. The decision consulted national league clubs, and considered government and New Zealand Football expert medical advice around non-essential travel and mass gatherings.”
There were two full rounds to go in the Premiership plus the semis and the final. Thirteen more games. With no relegation to worry about, there were three perhaps four teams who had nothing left to play for. Hence it made no sense for them to be playing at all. If Canterbury had defaulted their last two games as they would’ve had every understandable reason to do, away to Tasman and Hamilton, then that could have really shaken up the semi-final race and made a bit of a farce of things. Once it gets to that point it just makes sense to call it where it is and even more so when there are really only two things to decide: the Champions and the two Champions League spots. Well, as it happens there are two teams way out in front, Auckland City who have lost only once all season on 37 points, then Team Wellington seven points clear of third place with 34 points.
ACFC and Team Welly drew both times they played this season: 2-2 in Auckland and 0-0 in Wellington. It’s a bit of a bummer for Team Welly that they didn’t get the chance to topple City in the knockouts like they did last time, same as it’s a bummer for Tasman United or Hamilton Wanderers not to get the chance to play it out and try get into the semis, or for Eastern Suburbs to miss out on the chance to defend their title or Waitakere to get to play the semi-final they qualified for... but nobody’s complaining. This is the simplest and fairest way to conclude the season in what everyone is aware is a unique circumstance that is bigger than football. Perhaps they could have gone straight through to the playoffs and crammed those last three games into a single week but why overcomplicate it? Auckland City have been the best team all season and have been declared champions, Team Wellington were clearly the next best and have been given the second Champions League spot. All sorted.
Rightio then. I’ll get cracking on my annual Teams of the Season thingamajig soon, a 1st/2nd/3rd XI to shine a light on the best performing players of the competition. Without the added emphasis of knockout footy the teams are already starting to take shape in my head but you can wait patiently for all that. In the meantime, let’s throw it up for the champs.
Look, it’s not how they will have wanted to do it. But as Joe Pesci whispered to Robert De Niro to tell Al Pacino: It is what it is. They picked up the Charity Cup this past weekend with a win over Eastern Suburbs and follow that up now with an eighth Premiership championship and an eleventh premiers title. This is the seventh season in a row in which they’ve finished top of the table. That right there is why they’re the superior team in this competition.
But this season was a little different. Ramon Tribulietx had left and Jose Figueira took over as manager. The man who’d orchestrated a couple grand final victories for Team Welly against this very club, now taking the helm and with him came a little shakeup in some of the playing crew and of course with the implementation of his famous 3-4-3 formation. Yet Auckland City barely skipped a beat. They won five of their first six games and were undefeated until two games ago when they were stunningly upset by Tasman United thanks to a last minute winner from Jean-Philippe Saiko. ACFC kept seven clean sheets in 16 games and scored at least three goals in nine of those games. They scored more goals than anyone else, they also conceded the equal fewest. This is what Auckland City do during regular seasons.
One notable thing about their selections was the rotation. They had four top quality CBs for the back three and mixed and matched them basically every week. After the first three weeks during which Angel Berlanga was injured they never again picked the same back three in consecutive Premiership games until this final game (again not featuring Berlanga). Adam Mitchell was the standout there. He started 14/16 Prem games, getting his rest in the OCL where he only started the last game of three, and led the way from the back. Mario Bilen and Brian Kaltack each started 11 and Angel Berlanga started 10 with one appearance off the bench... so everyone got a comprehensive crack at it. Even Tom Doyle played a couple of his games in the back three too.
Curiously that rotation didn’t extend to the goalkeeping jersey. Enaut Zubikarai started the season opener but then had to return to Spain for personal reasons during which time Conor Tracey took his opportunity and ran with it. After a 2-2 draw against Team Welly in week two, Tracey then conceded just once in the next six games. Super Zubi came back in and got a few chances over the second half of things but in his four games he conceded seven times. Tracey only conceded eight in 12 games. CT had been really good for Canterbury United last season but came back to Auckland to prioritise his development in hopes of making the Olympic squad. Safe to say he’s made a pretty decent flex of it.
The engine room for ACFC was undoubtedly Mario Ilich and Cam Howieson in the centre. That’s the best two-man midfield in the league right there. A massive range of passing, plenty of positional excellence... and a fair dose of sneaky creativity too. Ilich’s defensive awareness allowed Howieson to commit forward more often and his incisive passing was responsible for plenty of their best work (not to mention his scoring four goals). Clayton Lewis also got a few games in midfield after he returned to the club from England, though was used more often as an attacking playmaker. Not a lot of room for Yousif Ali to continue his progress from last season though, just the four starts for him (and four more off the bench).
Similarly Maro Bonsu-Maro was squeezed out having scored a few very crucial goals for the club last term and even starting their semi-final. MBM only got one goal in seven substitute appearances this time around, no starts. That’s largely because of the ever-presence of 2019-20 Golden Boot winner Myer Bevan. Signed at a funky crossroads in his career, having been unable to nail down a few professional opportunities, Bevan hit up the Premmy in hot form after NZ U23s duty and carried that on with a hat-trick in the first half of his first game. He’d score 15 goals in 16 games all up, the rate of scoring drying up a but after his initial surge of nine in his first six but he never went more than two games without a banger and he now lifts the golden boot with ease.
Then you chuck in Logan Rogerson who returned to the Premiership from Germany and who was brilliant over the first month until injuries hampered him through the middle of things... and by the time he was back to full fitness so was Emiliano Tade who himself had forsaken a contract at the top pro team in South Africa (where he sorta replaced Jeremy Brockie in the squad, his arrival the last nail in the coffin for Brox). All the ex-pros turned up at ACFC. Tom Doyle was another one. So was Andrew Blake. Goes to show one major reason why City were as good as they were, they’re recruiting from a pool that most other teams can’t swim in. They’ve got the keys to the big boys pool, the one with the badass slippery slide and the high diving board, not to mention lifeguards that actually pay attention.
Tade started the last six games of the campaign and scored three times. By the end of it he was really beginning to create a wonderful combination with Myer Bevan, just look at Bevan’s goal against Eastern Suburbs in the last game. They didn’t get a lot from David Browne this season who was below his scintillating best but then he left midway through to win a contract in Finland so there you go. Ah yes and don’t forget Dylan Manickum either, who can play basically anywhere in the top three or even at wingback at a stretch. Manix played 13 games here, starting seven of them. He scored three goals. Speaking of wingbacks they had a lovely rotation there as well with Andrew Blake and Jordan Vale kicking things off before Alfie Rogers and Tom Doyle emerged in the mix.
It’ll be an interesting one to see what happens with some of these dudes once football gets back to normality because a few of them, such as Tracey, Bevan, Lewis, and Rogerson, will be targetting Olympic selection (whenever that is) and who knows where that could take them. Tom Doyle is a guy who has proven his worth at A-League level and Howieson is right on the fringes of that kind of prominence himself. Adam Mitchell and Mario Ilich too. Emiliano Tade has retired from the pro stuff as he’s preferring to stay in Aotearoa with his family but you’d be a brave one to guess what this team might look like next season. Which is exactly why you have to appreciate what they did this time. Yes, they’re the bully boys. Other teams don’t have the same resources. But that doesn’t make it easy. So many new players as well as a new manager and they’ve won all that there was to win. Big ups indeed.
There were a few times when things looked stunted, to be fair. City were always dominant in possession but consecutive 0-0 draws in games seven and eight showed that with the right kind of defensive effort and organisation you could slow them down. There was another scoreless draw against Team Welly early in the second half of the draw, not to mention how they were frustrated and ultimately pick-pocketed in that 2-1 loss down in Tasman which cost them their unbeaten run. This was a strange season though. There were coaching changes all over the show and no team was able to maintain much consistency for very long. So Auckland City having a little blip period in the middle was, relatively speaking, still a step above the rest of the pack. Anyway, then Emiliano Tade showed up and no worries.
Average ACFC Starting XI:
Tracey / Mitchell, Bilen, Kaltack / Vale, Ilich, Howieson, Blake / Lewis, Tade, Bevan
(Zubikarai, Berlanga, Doyle, Manickum, Rogerson)
And there’s your pretty picture of the champions. If this one gets the views then I reckon I’ll do a few more of these little team recaps. The rest of the top four in the next one then a couple for the outsiders. The WeeNix might get their own since it’s a different situation. I dunno, we’ll see how it goes. Keep reading, keep supporting The Niche Cache (especially on Patreon if you can spare a dime or two) and anytime you need a break from the hysteria we’ll still be right here doing what we always do and giving kiwi sports that positive prominence. Sweet as.
Other 2019-20 Premiership Team Reviews:
Team Wellington & Eastern Suburbs
Waitakere United, Hamilton Wanderers & Hawke’s Bay United
Tasman United, Canterbury United & Southern United
Wellington Phoenix Reserves
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