MIRAMAR RANGERS vs WELLINGTON OLYMPIC

It came down to this. Miramar Rangers versus Wellington Olympic in the South Central Series grand final, probably the two teams most would have picked for this ultimate game when the SCS began but that didn’t make this match-up any less exciting. These were the duo who slugged it out for the Central League title, with Olympic winning 1-0 in the penultimate round to claim the trophy. Kailan Gould with the only goal that day. 13 out of 22 starters from this game also started that one (plus three more were on the bench).

Then when they met in this Series during league play it was a stunning 4-4 draw in which there were four goals scored after the 88th minute including an equalising penalty with the last kick of the game from Ben Mata. Ollie Whyte scored a hatty in that one. Olympic played almost an hour with ten men after Tor Davenport-Petersen’s red card. It was a modern Natty League classic.

Plus these are also the two clubs where the overwhelming majority of Team Wellington players ended up after that franchise bowed out of existence with a Premiership triumph last season. Every sign pointed towards a cracking game of football at Jerry Collins Memorial Stadium in Porirua (even with no Auckland teams involved it was still a slight surprise that they didn’t schedule it at North Harbour Stadium just by force of habit).

Wellington Olympic took a stumble last week after making a heap of changes with their final status already secured, going down 5-1 to Cashmere Tech in the process. Naturally those mass changes were undone here. The Greeks were as close to full strength as they could be but for the injured Theo Ettema. Toby Hunt wore the gloves. A back three of Justin Gulley, Ben Mata, and Harry Chote. Wing-backs Lukas Halikias and Rory McKeown. Tor Devenport-Petersen and Sam Mitrakas in the midfield. Jack-Henry Sinclair and Kailan Gould flanking Gianni Bouzoukis up front. Sweet as.

Miramar Rangers also dropped points last round when they drew late with Selwyn but that was without many alterations. However their grand final team did suffer from quite a few injuries acquired along the way. Both starting wingbacks were on crutches for the game, Haris Zeb and Jorge Akers. Plus captain Sam Dewar was sent off against Selwyn and thus suspended. Bummer. As a result, they stuck with the back four of last week made up entirely of centre-backs: Scott Midgley on the right, Flynn O’Brien as a more cautious left-back... Taylor Schrijvers and Liam Wood in the middle. Ollie Whyte had to play a little deeper to cover for Dewar though Hugo Delhommelle was the main defensive mid. Nathan Simes played up front with Owen Barnett and Sam Mason-Smith. Andy Bevin roaming in behind them. Zac Jones was in goal.

The Team Welly Derby began with lots of Olympic passing compared to a direct approach from Rangers. Toby Hunt got two hands to a Nathan Simes shot in the third minute as Rangers threatened first, before Gianni Bouzoukis made a brilliant run to force a very good Zac Jones save to keep it even. Both goalies already getting stingers on the gloves inside five minutes. Pretty good sign of what was to follow: breathless action, baby.

Boom, 1-0 to Wellington Olympic... oh no wait it was offside. Never mind. Bouzoukis had touched in a McKeown cross but it didn’t count. Stink one for them because two minutes later they were losing. Andy Bevin had a crack after some scrappy stuff on the edge of the box and after a sneaky deflection Hunt was able to tip it onto the post... only for Simes to follow up with a finish that Hunt still got a big chunk of. 1-0 to Miramar Rangers instead. Advanced warning: don’t try to keep up with the logic of this match because that much mental gymnastics could strain a brain muscle.

Kailan Gould dashed in behind, held off his man, and struck a ninth minute attempt that Jones saved at his near post. Soon afterwards a Sinclair corner kick was punted towards goal by Mitrakas but Bevin of all people was able to deflect it over. There was a strange call when Sinclair was bowled over by Mason-Smith and somehow conceded the foul himself... but JHS was still inviting panic with a number of tricky crosses and runs. Yet it was a cross from McKeown on the other side which got it done. Corner kick from the right which was flicked on near post by Davenport-Petersen and then put home at the back stick by Bouzoukis. There’s his goal. 1-1 in the 19th minute.

Gould had a big appeal for a penalty. Schrijvers gave him a serve for having the nerve to claim it though it looked a decent enough shout to be fair. But from that same move Rangers were able to counter with Scott Midgley getting up the right flank and a beauty of a cut-back for Sam Mason-Smith allowed him to put Miramar back in front despite Gulley throwing himself at the ball and contributing a mighty deflection. 23 minutes gone.

This was a game with so many what-if moments. Big swings from small margins. Zac Jones made a great save to prevent what would have been a Schrijvers own goal... albeit Gould was flagged offside at the same time. Then soon after there was another goal up the other end. Miramar Rangers going up 3-1. Of course it was Ollie Whyte who bagged it. Never one to refrain from trying his luck with a sight on goal, Whyte pulled the trigger opportunistically and caught a deflection that drifted into the bottom corner with the keeper wrong-footed.

In response, Gould went on a jinking and jiving run forward – gotta match Whyte who’d just taken the lead in the golden boot race ahead of him with that goal – and he won a corner. That corner was cleared. But Justin Gulley can always pick out a superb pass so when he collected the ball and saw Jack-Henry Sinclair had some space in the box it was easy loot. JHS smashed it across goal and Harry Chote turned it in. Still hanging forward from the corner, go on then. The Greeks pulling it back to 3-2 in the 31st minute... we were almost up to 4-4 already. End to end. All over the place. Don’t stop or your head will start spinning.

This was only the third game that Bevin and Whyte had started together out of Miramar’s six SCS matches. Those two were on another level with some of their interplay, working one chance that Hunt was able to smother but then a give-and-go on 39’ saw Ollie Whyte go bang into the bottom corner once again, the other corner this time, to put an underline on his Golden Boot (and maybe MVP?) credentials. Probably one that Toby Hunt will feel he could have gotten down to quicker but so it goes. This was exhausting. 4-2 to Miramar Rangers at half-time.

Although not before some brouhaha as Scott Midgley took exception to Toby Hunt’s contact just before the half and got up in his face. Or as close to his face as he could get. Hunt was entitled to go for the ball though. He stood his ground. Bit of fun all the same.

Okay so the half-time break offered a rare pause in the madness to allow for some reflection. In terms of chances they’d been relatively evenly distributed but Rangers had been able to scramble a little better at the back whereas one or two lapses from Olympic, and some back luck, had cost them. But if they scored next then they were still well in the contest. No reason to panic in a game chock-full of goals.

Olympic went to the bench. On came Jaga Scott-Greenfield at the break, straight swap with Lukas Halikias. It then took all of 35 seconds before Jack-Henry Sinclair had blasted a volley on target which was firmly saved. Immediately on the attack. Couple of corner kicks. Sinclair flicked one on to Davenport-Petersen on the overlap. Midgley caught him. Penalty to Olympic. Up stepped Ben Mata who had scored four outta four from the spot this South Central Series including two against Miramar in the last meeting. But, incredibly, he struck it onto the post. Finally missed one. Awful timing but nobody scores them all and he was literal inches away from getting his team back within one. Inches.

It’s funny how those little margins add up in a final. Rangers almost scored on the counter except Whyte’s cut-back was a little behind Simes (more about Simes overrunning it). Then Hugo Delhommelle did something rather special...

Magnifique.

Olympic made two more changes, getting Alex Palezevic and Nati Hailemariam on there. Gianni Bouzoukis was one of the guys replaced and he didn’t seem too happy with that decision so his manager took a sec to explain the thinking to him. Not sure what it was, Bouzoukis had already scored once (although they weren’t getting enough ball to him), maybe it was down to how well they did with ten men in the league meeting when Gould went up front alone and they wanted to find a similar mixture. Who knows. Didn’t really have the desired effect though because in the 59th minute Nathan Simes rolled one across for Scott Midgley, still seeking to push forward despite the three-goal lead, and he buried it for 6-2. Maaaate.

Half an hour to go and four goals down, that’s a bitch of a hill to climb. Did Olympic have it in them? It would have helped if they’d been awarded another penalty when a bouncing ball caught Ollie Whyte on the hand but nah the ref wasn’t having that. Then Sinclair slid in TDP whose shot was deflected onto the roof of the net. They needed one of those to go in. The Greeks were fast running out of time... and even if they did score four, there was no sign of Miramar Rangers being done themselves.

Meanwhile here’s Tor Davenport-Petersen almost busting someone’s camera...

On came Joao Moreira for Rangers. Whyte drilled one wide via a slight deflection. Up the other end, another Sinclair feed for TDP got the fans sitting up but the nudged header from Davenport-Petersen didn’t have enough juice. Olympic were looking pretty gassed by now - it’s exhausting playing from behind. They were four goals down and chasing whereas Miramar were able to play patiently without risk. Numbers at the back, hit ‘em on the break. It was actually a lot like the women’s decider the day before with Canterbury trying to find a way back in against a comfortable Southern team. It got to the point where Andrew Dewhurst and Harry Ngata on comms were talking instead about the All Whites as if they weren’t there to commentate a National League final.

Long after the result began to feel inevitable, Joao Moreira scored a seventh. 87th minute rounding the keeper on the end of a mint Mason-Smith ball and he arguably took a touch more than necessary before slipping it into the net. A more experienced keeper than young Toby Hunt might’ve taken offence to that. Not that it would have mattered, not that it would have changed anything.

Miramar Rangers emptied the bench to get some of the young dudes out there. Olympic spirits had already been broken. The score didn’t reflect the true quality of the two teams, we know that there’s bugger all between them because we’ve seen them play so many times. It was just that thing about chasing the game in a final and having to take extra risks. Those little margins tallying up. Hey, no point settling for a narrow defeat in a final. Might as well have a crack at it. All goods. Wellington Olympic will be a force next year once again. But it wasn’t meant to be this time around.

Lock it in, friends: Miramar Rangers are your South Central Series champions. 7-2 winners in the grand final... with six different goal scorers. Missing both wing-backs and a suspended captain, no dramas whatsoever. The excellence of Andy Bevin and Ollie Whyte were too much to handle in such an open contest and Taylor Schrijvers had a wonderful performance in a game where the art of defending was not high on the agenda for everyone. Let alone the goal from Delhommelle. Or Mason-Smith’s reliable excellence up top. What more is there to say? They’re a top team and this was their day. Savour the glory.

In keeping with true South Central Series vibes, Miramar Rangers won it without keeping a single clean sheet. Wellington Olympic didn’t keep one either but what Rangers also did was they scored multiple times in every match including seven in the final. Threats from all over the park... including Scott Midgley whose two games at right back saw him make wonderful use of that touchline getting forward. This was a tournament defined by an excessive amount of goals. An abundance. A plethora. An array of bangers. In the end the team that scored the most of them lifted the trophy.

Speaking of trophies, Ollie Whyte got the Golden Boot in amongst everything else. Should have gotten the MVP too, let’s be honest, but the way they vote for it meant that Pieter-Taco Bierema of Selwyn United got it instead. The goalie for the last-placed team. Not that he didn’t have a brilliant campaign – he was already a lock for First Team goalie when the Team of the Seasons are published later in the week. But this ain’t really how these awards are supposed to work. Best player for the best team tends to be preferable. Ah well. It’s the New Zealand National League. It’ll be like that sometimes.

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