Top Five Prospects In The Auckland FC Reserves For 2026
Auckland FC’s instant success upon their entry into the A-League caught plenty of people by surprise but it didn’t happen by accident. They hired a champion coach from within the league. They gave him some highly pedigreed assistants. They signed strong imports and solid local players. They capitalised on a ready-made fanbase and a fascinating new derby. They implemented a winning style built upon reliable and repeatable factors (defensive solidity, physicality, high work-rate, speed in transition, quality set piece delivery, et cetera). And it worked a treat... but you know about all that.
Much less of a watercooler topic is the fact that this club didn’t only build a powerful A-League team from outta nothing in the space of the year, they also did the same thing with their academy. The AFC Reserves went from a hand-picked group of U20s players from across the Northern League at the start of the year, with former Australian international Luke Casserly brought across to coach them, struggling at the beginning as the team settled and gelled but finding consistency over the second half of the Northern League and then putting together a superb initial National League that saw them finish third in the country with the best defensive record of the eleven teams. They drew 1-1 with eventual champs Auckland City. They won 2-1 against minor premiers Wellington Olympic. It was a remarkable run from such a young team compiled from scratch, far beyond any expectations or precedents.
The Auckland FC set-up is very different to the Wellington Phoenix system. The Nix have competitive teams beginning at U14s up until the U20s/Reserves, with “Pre-Academy Centres” for kids aged 9-13. They run camps around the country but their academy is an insular thing where players move to Wellington and work their way up the grades. They deal with the same coaches and they progress alongside the same teammates. It’s so in-house that they even helped set up a charter school (NZPAA). That kind of approach is similar to how the biggest clubs in the world run their academies... but Auckland FC came up with a bespoke approach.
What AFC do, is they leave players at their junior clubs for longer but monitor and help develop the best talent through their Club Partnerships (which they have with basically all the top teams in the Northern region). Then as players get a little older they move into the range of AFC’s Talent Development Centre. This phase is sort of like an outreach programme. They take the best players for extra training sessions and identification games as well as offering “physical and nutritional support” to get them ready for the jump. The TDP stuff is up and running on both the boys and girls side, with friendly games for each having already been held at U17 level against the Wellington Phoenix late last year.
As far as competitive footy goes though, they only have their U20s/Reserves who compete in the National League and Northern League. That’s a group of roughly 20 players, not including the ALM scholars. They’re the anointed picks of the litter within that 16-20 age range. The concept is that players stick around at their original clubs for longer, potentially even playing senior footy before they join AFC properly, gaining a wide range of coaching and tactical experiences (though with AFC still popping in to assist throughout the journey). There was no existing blueprint for this approach – it’s an entirely made-to-order youth development strategy. Both this and the more traditional Welly Nix style have their positives and negatives so it’s not about which is better... it’s just funky to see them go in such different directions.
Terry McFlynn, AFC Director of Football: “We made a conscious decision as a club not to have an academy all the way down to Under-13s. The NRF teams that are here in existence, they do a great job in youth development, so we’ve partnered with all the TDP clubs – there’s 18 of them across the greater Auckland and BOP region. We’ve got memorandums of understanding with all of them. We provide coaching resources, we provide video analysis, education seminars, nutrition, and the big one for us was strength and condition. We brought in a full-time strength and conditioning coach to work within the reserve and development centre space. He set programmes and that’s distributed to all the NRF clubs.
The reason behind that – what we didn’t want to do was decimate all the other clubs. Take three or four of the best players from each club, put them in one team, and then basically you dilute the competition. So for us, we we run a development centre which takes place on a Monday night. We’ve got two age groups: 14-16 and 17-18. Those players come from the local clubs so they get an extra development training with us. It’s not always on the grass. Sometimes I’ll be in the classroom working on tactics, working on video analysis, working on nutrition, strength and conditioning, understanding what it means to be a professional footballer. Then probably 17 onwards, then that’ll be the next group of young men that we bring in as full-time scholars into the programme that would play in the reserve team and train with the first team.”
There’s also the tricky aspect of Auckland FC now having an OFC Pro League squad. There are some Reserves lads in there, and even one or two first teamers, but three-quarters of that team were signed from outside their existing player base. It’s a unique situation and even the club itself is probably still figuring out where that team sits within its hierarchy. Above the Reserves? Parallel to the Reserves? Entirely separate? We have seen several of the better Reserves players start to get involved with that squad (McKenlay, Burns, Naidoo, Martin, Fitzarris, etc) so is would appear that it’s taking shape as a stepping stone between National League and A-League (whether the competition is of that standard is irrelevant, the point is that they’re using it as a progressive step).
The Pro League squad experienced a major milestone a couple weeks ago when 18yo Aussie-raised, NZ-eligible winger Bailey Ferguson made his A-League debut... the first dude signed as an OPL player to move into the A-League. His age means he fits under the Youth Player banner, making him available for the ALM squad whereas some of those others would need to sign a professional contract in order to play. That makes it complicated for others to follow him, although Kian Donkers has joined a couple of wider travelling squads. We’ll see in a few months whether any of their OPL freelancers stick around for the Northern League. The Pro League and the Northern League overlap so Luke Casserly has left his post as the Reserves coach to be the main man for the OPL (along with his ALM assistant coach role) and Rory Fallon has been brought in to be the new bossman for the Ressies.
It’s from those Ressies that this list of top prospects has been picked. The OPL dudes aren’t really prospects anyway, many of them have already played professional football. There are fellas like Oscar Mason (21yo), Isa Prins (20yo), and Bailey Ferguson (18yo) in there but for the sake of clarity this piece focuses on the hombres who competed in the National League late last year. The rules are the same as with the Nixers: no players with existing A-League contracts, including scholarships (ruling out Luka Vicelich who’d otherwise have been one of the first names on the list had he not recently been upgraded to a scholar), and no players who’ve already debuted in the ALM... which is unfortunate for James Mitchell and Ryan Mackay who in the past fortnight became the first two players to debut in the A-League for AFC after joining the club at the Reserve Team level. All the other youngsters we’ve seen thus far were signed as A-League scholars (Finn McKenlay, Jonty Bidois, Adama Coulibaly & Oliver Middleton).
Mackay would have been in the mix for a scholarship contract except that they chose Luka Vicelich in his position instead. But following on from a standout National League campaign, he’s at least been able to take advantage of Vicelich being away with the OPL side to make a deserved pro debut. Don’t expect too much down the line though – Mackay has committed to the University of Denver so he won’t be around beyond this season. He’ll join NZ U20s rep Keegan Kelly at UD. It’s also the former school of Ronan Wynne, currently with Auckland’s OPL side, as well as current Football Ferns goalkeeper Alina Santos. As for Mitchell, he’s all class in the midfield (and has played a bit of centre-back too), having formed a superb combination with Finn McKenlay during the Nats. Both of those fellas have the potential to be A-League starters. Now let’s get to the list.
Aston Burns
Winger/Striker – Born 2 August 2006
Burns didn’t start 2025 with the AFC Reserves... in fact he played against them in their first official game, featuring for Fencibles. But he came across for the National League phase and from the moment he scored a belter of a solo goal against the Wellington Phoenix Reserves he was set. Lightning quick, like many of the wingers that AFC have accrued, but also relatively tall and with a sturdy frame (check out the shoulder he drops on Hayden Thomas in the clip below). He’s pretty close to being A-League Ready already. In keeping with that idea he’s currently logging games in the Pro League having been called up to the squad after Ralph Rutherford (another speedy winger on the club’s books) busted his ACL. Burns scored five goals for Fencies in the Northern League. He grabbed two for Auckland FC in the Nats. He’s already got one in the OPL. Usually seen on the left wing but sometimes puts in a shift at striker too... look, it’s not going to happen overnight but if they want to develop a Jesse Randall regen then this bloke right here is a good shout.
Eli Jones
Goalkeeper – Born 4 February 2007
What do you know, another fella signed from Fencibles... although Jones was born and at least partly raised in Palmerston North. Jones was part of the initial intake of Reserves players and wore the gloves against his old team in the club’s first Northern League match. They have quite a few goalies in this system so they rotated them a lot throughout the year, therefore appearances were a bit sporadic for him. But EJ played in the team’s first ever win (4-0 vs Manurewa) and went undefeated in his four National League efforts with the highlight being a very late penalty save in a 1-1 draw against Western Suburbs. He was selected in the OPL squad... however a bout of glandular fever has kept him sidelined for the initial phases of that tournament. With Michael Woud, Oli Sail, James Hilton, Joe Knowles, and Blake Callinan all around he might only be sixth on the charts (albeit with a couple of those others dealing with long-term injuries at the moment) but he’s also the youngest of those six and from what he’s shown in his opportunities to date – as a powerful and confident presence between the sticks – his name is definitely worth jotting down.
Benjamin Perez Baldoni
Winger/Attacking Midfielder – Born 30 July 2009
The youngest player to feature for AFC last year, the only one born in 2009 to do so, BPD came aboard from Ellerslie (where his twin brother Vicente still plays, while older bro Astor was at Bay Olympic last year). He was 15 years old when he scored his first senior goal for the Ponies and he still hadn’t quite reached sweet sixteen when he bagged a goal on debut for AFC Reserves, finishing with three goals in five substitute appearances (totalling less than 100 minutes) during the Northern League. Didn’t see him much in the Nats where he only featured twice as a substitute. That was probably because they didn’t want to over-exert the lad after he’d also featured in two Oceania U16s Championships, a FIFA Youth Series tour, and a FIFA U17 World Cup all in the space of about 16 months. He won the Golden Boot at the 2025 Oceania U16s. When you watch him play, check for a crafty, intelligent playmaker with a lovely touch, the ability to burst past tacklers, and a penchant for curling the ball into the top corner from distance. Although whether you’ll be watching him in an AFC jersey, that’s another question – he recently had a trial at FC Basel in Switzerland, alongside his twin brother by the looks, so who knows.
Dejaun Naidoo
Winger – Born 15 July 2007
There’s a crazy stat around Dejaun Naidoo where the only two games that the Auckland FC Reserves lost during their 10-game National League campaign were the only two games that Naidoo didn’t start. That’s a trend worth paying attention to. He also scored in a 1-1 draw away against Auckland City, with four goals and two assists overall (appearing in all ten matches, something only Aston Burns matched him at). A skilled forward who came up at Auckland United and also played some senior footy for Eastern Suburbs, Naidoo is a busy player who likes to get involved from the wide areas and has that sneaky ability to put himself in the right spot at the right time. He turned up on the bench a couple times for the Pro League squad during the New Zealand hub for another positive indicator about how he’s tracking. And he’s still a year or two younger than most of the other Reserve team regulars.
Van Fitzharris
Midfielder – 21 January 2008
One of the many superb talents that have risen out of Tauranga in the last few years (including Jonty Bidois at AFC). Somebody’s doing something right round those ways. By the time he linked up with AFC Reserves, just in time for the National League, he’d already played for New Zealand at U16 level and was just about to head off to the U17 World Cup where he started games against Mali and Saudi Arabia (playing alongside Luka Vicelich, Ben Perez Baldoni, Nathan Martin, and several others who are probably in the AFC Talent Development Programme if not the AFC Reserves quite yet). That’s on top of being a regular for a pretty good Tauranga City team – even scoring against AFC Reserves at one stage. He’s a nimble central midfielder with nice attacking tendencies and a clever eye a pass, someone who could yet specialise as an eight or a ten (and he also played a fair bit on the wing for Tauranga). He’s already shown face in wider the OPL squad so signs are good that he’s progressing quickly.
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