For seven straight years Auckland City has reigned supreme in Oceania. Season after season they’ve triumphed in the Champions League and as their reward they’ve represented the confederation at the Club World Cup.
The Wellington Phoenix have gotten a lot of bad press this season. A lot of it they brought upon themselves, a lot of it was drawn from their unstable future, some of it probably had to do with fan fatigue and the rest was just a pile on.
And guess who scored a couple goals for his Dutch club this week? None other, mate. Marco Rojas scored both as Heerenveen beat Den Haag 2-0, shooting them up into the Europa League playoff spots.
Sure, the Premiership ended a couple weeks back… but not everyone’s gone back to their winter clubs just yet. Auckland City and Team Wellington still have the small matter of trying to qualify for the 2018 Club World Cup to worry about.
Manchester City absolutely blitzed the field in Pep Guardiola’s second season in charge. They had one hand on the Premier League title before the turn of the year after a record 18 consecutive wins (and 22 unbeaten games to start the season) left the rest of them all eating dust.
The end of one season means the beginning of the next when it comes to professional sports, there’s no time to dwell on the past and if the future isn’t being planned already then you’re only falling further and further behind.
Burnley played another game so you know what that means… another goal for the tally of Chris Wood. Another win for the Clarets as well and coupled with Arsenal’s latest defeat that European qualification is looking a decent flutter.
It means that Chris Greenacre finally gets a win in his third caretaker stint. It means that Sarpreet Singh takes his season tally to four goals in the top flight. It means that the Nix snap a winless streak of six games.
Chris Wood and Ashley Barnes, the best of friends and the best of strike partners. A better love story than Rome & Juliet, than every Sandra Bullock movie, than pretty much every tale ever told since Winston Reid first met Andy Carroll.
And now we’ve got the inaugural Premmy Files Team of the Season. Three of them, in fact, because the more the local league is celebrated, the better.
At this point, most Phoenix fans would be happy to keep Chris Greenacre on full-time, right? It should be like three strikes in baseball, three interim gigs and the job is yours.
Chis Wood hurt his knee just before Christmas, colliding with Hugo Lloris as he strove for an equaliser in the first half of a 3-0 defeat to Tottenham. After trying and failing to run it off he was replaced by Ashley Barnes and wouldn’t play again for a couple months.
Stefan Marinovic made a rare mistake in goal this week but that doesn't even compare to the ruthless April Fool's Day prank he was on the end of at Whitecaps HQ... in which an interviewer deliberately called him Australian. Disgusting behaviour.
Auckland City versus Team Wellington, it was the predicted final and it was a predictable final too. A couple big game teams with quality defensive structures and a habit for taking control of the midfield.
It’s been a funky old season but we’ve ended up exactly where we figured we always would, with the two best teams going head to head in the grand final. Auckland City on the back of a fifth straight Premiership league title up against Team Wellington looking for a third straight championship victory.
A few hours after the All Whites game finished, Portland kicked off their game away to FC Dallas with a little controversy. They were coming off an awful 4-0 defeat in the Big Apple against New York Red Bulls and new gaffer Giovanni Savarese had swung the axe.
Auckland City were always favourites coming in against Eastern Suburbs, a team they’d already beaten twice this season.Twenty-four hours later we had what promised to be a much closer game. Team Wellington against Canterbury United, a pair of teams that played out a competitive 0-0 draw just a couple weeks ago.
Was that the start you were hoping for from Fritz Schmid? Probably not. But a game like this one, a neutral ground friendly against Canada, wasn’t really about the result and you already knew that by the relaxed attitude towards certain players staying at their clubs.
Here we are then. Three more games left in the season with a trophy and a title and another spot in the Oceania Champions League still to be handed out.
Leading your Flying Kiwis this week… it’s Elliot Collier. If you don’t know then you know now, Collier’s been on a rise so sharp these last few months you’d think he was shot into orbit by those Rocket Lab folks.