On Sunday afternoon the 2018-19 NZ Premiership season kicks off, Auckland City hosting Team Wellington in that Charity Cup thing they always do at the start of things which is really just a way of sneaking a game in early that they’d otherwise have to postpone when the World Club Cup comes around. But a one-off fixture to get the ball rolling which doubles as a rematch of last season’s final (and also the OFC Champs League semi-final) is pretty cool. And they’re even putting it on telly this time. Marvellous.

The last few seasons it’s been Auckland City and Team Wellington bossing the lot of them. Four of the last five years they’ve met in the Grand Final, with Callum McCowatt’s second half strike giving ACFC the trophy back in April for some belated revenge after losing to Team Welly in the previous two grand finals. But then the TeeDubs went and snapped City’s stranglehold on the Club World Cup and, yeah, enjoyable old season that. Eastern Suburbs were the real upstarts with an extremely young squad of kiwi up and comers. Canterbury United had an excellent campaign. Southern and Tasman were better than expected, Hawke’s Bay and Waitakere had terms to forget, and Hamilton and the Wellington Phoenix propped up the legs of the table all the way down the bottom.

That’s all by the by, if you wanna revisit all that then first port of call is to check out the Premmy Files Teams of the Season. Then maybe take a peek at the grand final recap. The NZ Premiership tag line on the right hand side takes you to all the other such coverage, sweet as, let us proceed.

Now, what’d be cool to do now is to go through the squad lists but apparently most clubs don’t wanna play to my schedule, the bastards. Southern announced theirs way back – legends! – while Hamilton’s turned up this morning and Auckland City have at least run through some names in their media day video. But most of them have only announced a few signings so far so I don’t wanna give unfair preference to some over others. Nah, I’ll give the squads the once-over at a later date.

(Update: of course they were all revealed within a few hours of this thing going live but the point still stands - squad details in a later piece).

Auckland City are defending champs, Auckland City are thus where we oughta begin. They lost this corresponding fixture a year ago and then drew to Southern in their second game… but quickly figured it out from there. Goals galore and a whole lotta clean sheets as well. Their only loss after the opening game was an overturned result due to an ineligible player. People will remember their incredible run of clean sheets in the second half of the season but they kept 14 clean sheets in 20 Premmy games all up so they were never not protecting the net.

The good news for Ramon Tribulietx is that pretty much the whole defence will be back for another swing, and with a couple impressive additions. The bad news is that the front line will not be. Their three top scorers in 17-18 were Emiliano Tade (16 goals), Ryan de Vries (8 goals) and Callum McCowatt (7 goals). 31 goals of their 41 total disappeared into overseas opportunities. Plus four of their five finals goals. That… that’s a huge loss. Like, you can’t even overstate it. De Vries left midseason and they kept winning but they started winning 1-0 or 2-0 instead of 5-0 and 6-0. In the five games that RDV started which weren’t overturned for paperwork reasons, ACFC averaged 4.4 goals. And in the 14 that he didn’t start in they averaged 1.7 goals per game (but conceded on average a goal every 180 mins… and every one of those goals came in the first three games he missed, hence: Premiership Champions).

How that gets figured out we can only wait and see. Micah Lea’alafa is coming back but we’ll keep an eye on what the rest of his frontline teammates look like (preseason it’s been Lea’alafa, Lopez & Manickum up topskees). Tribulietx’s fellas aren’t gonna concede many. That’s no drama. Albert Riera (now a NZ citizen thus All Whites eligible… though that ship mighta sailed by now) is out for the first few games but Cam Howieson will remain a key player. Just need somebody to score the goals, is all.

I dunno, it’s a huge call but I wouldn’t be shocked if City have a few relative struggles this season. Emiliano Tade had an enormous influence on this team. Whether or not they’ve dropped off enough to miss the final… that’s another thing altogether. See, they’ve done a bit of a Bayern Munich in their transfer work - but you can wait for the squad analysis for the explanation of that allegation.

Team Wellington have added occasional All Whites winger Henry Cameron and it’ll be curious to see how he goes. In the least he’ll be a replacement for Joel Stevens, who left midseason for Sweden where he’s still playing most weeks. Cameron’s an interesting fella, the injury he copped on All Whites debut ruined his Blackpool career and he didn’t do anything at Limerick in Ireland. That he’s headed down this way suggests he didn’t have too many options at this point and he’s only 21 years old. Hopefully he thrives with a run of games and takes the league by storm.

He’ll have some solid teammates. Lots of local players, many of them with that crucial chip on their shoulder after failing to make the cut at the Wellington Phoenix. Justin Gulley, Hamish Watson, Jack-Henry Sinclair, Liam Wood, etc. Getting their deep midfield duo of Mario Ilic and Mario Barcia back is massive for Team Welly, who have also announced that they’ve snapped up young midfielder Alex Palezevic from Hawke’s Bay, one of HBU’s best players last campaign.

Of course, for the first time ever Team Wellington will have to contend with a midseason trip to the Club World Cup, an incredible experience for those players and a little bit of a shop window too, just quietly, although I’m kinda sceptical about that angle. There’s no doubt that Team Welly will be title contenders again and they were only seven minutes away from extra time in the grand final so they were close already. Couple that ACFC might be a little weaker and Team Welly slightly stronger and… bingo. The main trick will be how they deal with that first ever December trip to the Middle East.

Yet the number one team to watch for in my mind is Eastern Suburbs. If you didn’t get the memo, East met West and Eastern Suburbs have partnered with Declan Edge’s Ole Academy (which itself is partnered with the Chatham Cup beaten finalist Western Suburbs club) for the upcoming season. Now, Declan is Declan. He’s a steady ol’ bloke. Doesn’t do things by half measures. His academy has some of the absolute best prospects in Aotearoa football but if you’re bringing them in, with Declan as a “Technical Advisor”, then you’re agreeing to a certain philosophy of football too – both in terms of style of play and also developmental priorities.

Thing is, Eastern Suburbs under Danny Hay last year (who’s back as coach again) were already going hard developing young kiwis. Folks like Leon van den Hoven, Kelvin Kalua, Kingsley Sinclair, Max Mata, Charlie Spragg, and so on, so forth. LVDH has gone to Holland and not all of the others are coming back but now you can add Elijah Just, Nando Pijnaker and Dalton Wilkins to that crew instead with last year’s two best players, Tim Payne and Andre De Jong, both coming back for more as well. Bloody get some, aye? Suburbs made the semis last time but they lost their last three games in a row after ADJ left for Aussie - against Auckland City twice, including the semi, and Canterbury. They were right there until the last couple steps and couldn’t get over ‘em. Beat Team Welly twice, to be fair, but lost all five times to the other two semi-finalists.

There’s a theory with high-philosophy teams, which are usually also young teams, that they tend to lack that defining something that makes the ultimate difference. Netherlands in the 70s losing a couple World Cup finals. Western Suburbs losing a Chatham Cup final. Not sure if I believe that or not but only time’s gonna tell if this lot can crack the duopoly at the top. If anyone can then they’re the best shot. Literally the two best player development pools in the country have combined here (guts to the Welly Nix lot, you’re third but I’ll listen to arguments).

Canterbury United were really good last season, overcoming a rough start with just one point from their first three games to lose only twice in the next sixteen. But push came to shove and they couldn’t find a way through against Team Welly in the semis. Just… couldn’t break through. That was pretty well evidenced in the fact that when lead striker Stephen Hoyle scored, which he did nine times, they took 22 of a possible 24 points with 3.1 goals per game. When he didn’t score, which included five games against TW and ACFC, the Dragons won four, drew two and lost five with 10 goals for and 14 conceded. Not Hamilton Wanderers numbers by any stretch but also not the kind of form that’ll win you a ‘ship.

Loved the Dragons midfield last season, with Gary Ogilvie, James Pendrigh and George King doing the business, and they had a quality back four of Aaron Spain, Tom Schwarz, Francis De Vries and Sean Liddicoat when they were able to get the quarter all out there together (when all four were playing consistently by the end of things was when CU was at their best). A quartet which has lost De Vries but re-added Brock Messenger. However they’re missing a creative spark. Willy Gerdsen’s re-signed as coach so that’s a good thing. Now to prove that last season wasn’t their peak but instead the beginning of a long journey.

Those were the four semi-finalists from last time and, honestly, it feels a safe bet to wager that all four will be back in the semis again come next May. Perhaps Waitakere can crack on like in days of old? Perhaps. Chris Milicich is an excellent coach and there are some talented players at that club. Maybe not enough though. After eight games last season they had 14 points and were well in contention for the semis. Then they went nine games without a win, only breaking that streak in the final game of the season with a 5-3 win over Tasman by which point they were well out of it. It wasn’t so much the goals that were the worry, Waitaks were only held scoreless four times in 18 games despite the trash results. However they also only kept two clean sheets, both in the opening five games, and even the WeeNix had more than that.

Or perhaps Southern United are in for another boost? After a terrible season two years ago, they had a brilliant one the previous time with six wins, six draws and six defeats earning them fifth place. Eight points off fourth so they were no threat to the finals but, bloody hell, not a bad slog from the Southerners. They did it the old fashioned way by being tough to beat. Very rarely able to shut a team out, though a 0-0 draw with Team Welly in the capital was a memorable one, yet they also never got blown away. Southern stuck in there and then scored late goals to steal points. Never lost by more than two goals in any game. Won their last three to surge into fifth. Erik Panzer is a great addition to this squad and, thankfully, they’ll still have that Irish flavour to them with coach Paul O’Reilly, captain Conor O’Keefe and top scorer Garbhan Coughlan – as well as a few funky fresh imports who could prove effective. Props on the squad announcement vid too.

Tasman United have looked local with most of their current signings, snapping up Nelson footballing heroes of the past and present. Defender Fox Slotemaker is the one that stands out, he’s been doing big things over in Australia. Ah sure but it’s hard to pick them to climb very far up the ladder. It all started brightly with two wins from two to begin things… they then went their next six without a win and didn’t take consecutive victories again all term. In the back half of the season they conceded 29 goals in nine games. So… forgive me for being sceptical here. Their top scorer was Paul Ifill and he’s retired. Their second top scorer was Maksym Kowal and he’s signed with Canterbury. Their most exciting young player was Callan Elliot and he’s trialling with the Phoenix. Would absolutely love to see Tassie shred it up and crack the top four but I fear it might be a difficult one, sadly. No doubt new manager Andy Hedge has alternative ideas.

Same for Hawke’s Bay. Too much player turnover killed them last time, a bit of backs to the wall defiance got them off to a fine start with eight points from four games… until they took eleven points from their next fourteen. Once their slim squad settled into the long season it was a little too much. And we already know that Alex Palezevic has gone to Welly, Hayden McHenery has gone to Auckland City, Bill Robertson’s been left out of the squad altogether (despite starting every game as captain last time) and Birhanu Taye damn sure can’t do it all by himself, the poor fella. Gotta get some more folks to move to Napier is all… dunno why they wouldn’t, it’s flippin’ gorgeous there (and the new squad does have a few tasty additions, to be fair). Also… even if the season doesn’t go smoothly for Hawke’s Bay, this home jersey is magical.

Which brings us to the two cellar dwellers. Hamilton Wanderers are coming off a season with one win. They didn’t win a single game in the entirety of 2017. They kept zero clean sheets and conceded three or more ten times in 18 games. It was a disaster and they were munted from the start.

At least they had Tommy Semmy. It often seemed like they were a one man team, Tommy against eleven, although to be fair to the Tron Wands they were unlucky in more than a few games. They were a team with a losing streak that had forgotten how to grind it out, a fresh slate and you can expect them to do a lot better by default – after all they can’t do much worse. It’s tough for them to attract players when Auckland (and its three superior Premmy clubs) is only an hour’s drive away but there are heaps of top notch players in those Northern Leagues so the squad announcement did have some positivity to offer.

Taking us all the way to the Welly Nix, whom I’m backing to finish dead last in 2018-19. It’s not their fault, they’re a youth team competing against grown-ass men… and Eastern Suburbs. The WeeNix are the only team whose strict priority is to forge players for another team at a higher level. Even Suburbs, those are individual players getting moulded with the entire world as their oyster. The Nix, on the other hand, are specifically developing them for a single team and it’s a single team that doesn’t hardly pick them anyway.

There has actually been some progress there with Sarpreet Singh and Libby Cacace bursting onto the A-League scene but a desire for better opportunities elsewhere saw the WeeNix lose Liam Wood, Luke Tongue and Hamish Watson to other Premmy teams mid-season and James McGarry, Logan Rogerson, Monty Patterson and Ollie Whyte have all departed since. Sam Philip is off in the States at uni, Calvin Harris and Liam Moore are heading over in January. Already overmatched with 53 goals conceded last season – more than Hamilton! – and now they’ve effectively lost an entire starting eleven’s worth of soldiers.

Look to help from the senior team? Haha, no chance. The Phoenix have 17 players signed up less than two weeks out from the season. That’s barely enough for a matchday squad, let alone having leftovers to suit up for the ressies. And when a youth team loses players, it can’t turn to the transfer market to help things – it turns to even younger players. Will Ebbinge (in his last season before he heads to Harvard in the States, the clever bugger) and Ben Waine (who’s spent a lot of time with the senior team in preseason) are still there and poised to be important figures. Gotta say it though, it ain’t gonna be pretty.

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