Flying Kiwis – August 9
A new Premier League season has begun and yet again Aotearoa has Chris Wood representing us with pride. Although this season looks like it’ll be a little different for The Woodsman.
A new Premier League season has begun and yet again Aotearoa has Chris Wood representing us with pride. Although this season looks like it’ll be a little different for The Woodsman.
One of the major hurdles that New Zealand’s senior football teams face is the gulf between qualifying for major tournaments (or intercontinental playoffs) by dominating Oceania teams and then having to switch into underdog mode once they get to those major tournaments
When Chris Wood signed for Newcastle United back in January, the club were in a state of suppressed panic. Eddie Howe had taken over as manager from Steve Bruce a month or so earlier and had overseen an uptick in performances... but not in results
Gotta love a big week that begins with a contract extension. Ahead of a huge European tie, Max Mata was given a healthy boost with a new deal at Sligo Rovers that’ll keep him at the club until the end of 2024. Fine developments.
Season two for the Wellington Phoenix Wahine loomed with a very important question to be answered about how they built their squad. Would they continue to trend young and inexperienced or would they seek out a few more recognised professionals this time as well?
Call this unfinished business: Rebekah Stott has signed with Brighton for a second time. Stotty only managed eight appearances for the Seagulls after joining them in 2020 as her cancer diagnosis caused things to be snapped short but…
The nation of Denmark is made up of the Jutland Peninsula and an archipelago of 433 more islands, the largest of which is called Sjælland, aka Zealand. Sjælland includes the capital city of Copenhagen. Further south on its eastern coastline is a place called Køge. It’s northern region includes a city called Helsingør
This wasn’t a debut as Stamenic did previously start and play 70 minutes of a league game against Randers back in November 2020. But he spent all of last term out on loan thus this was his first match since. Just a cheeky 601 days between appearances
There’s no easy fix when an international team is struggling for results. You can sack the manager but that often isn’t the solution it initially appears to be. And unlike club teams they’re not together on the training paddock throughout the weeks…
It’s preseason for most right now, and offseason for many, but for Sligo Rovers this past week brought around the biggest match of their season so far as they travelled to Wales to take on Bala Town in their first leg Europa Conference League qualifier
It has been exactly three weeks since the dream of watching an All Whites team at the 2022 FIFA World Cup was shattered over ninety minutes of enticed agony. One single game to decide the final qualifier for the tournament
Max Mata supplied the feed in Sligo Rovers’ latest, don’t you even worry about that. It was a 3-1 win over Shelbourne and he served up a goal and an assist and each of them were gorgeous instances of footballing activities
Where are the goals going to come from? After 180 minutes of goalless action in this international window the same old question remains and we’re not much closer to answering it.
These are the slim pickings weeks of Flying Kiwis when offseasons and international windows cause interruptions and yet here we are anyway with yarns still to be told. Once upon a time the column used to take a break around now. Those were in the old days
This Ferns tour is one of awkward timing. A couple games in Europe at a time when many players have been out of season for a couple of weeks and there aren’t a heap of others to make up the difference
The back half of last season made it clear that the Welly Nix were going to need to do some clever business in the transfer market in order to get them over the whole ‘winning a finals game’ hump
Back at it straight out of All Whites duty and for Logan Rogerson was immediately on the scoresheet, channelling that World Cup frustration into a tidy first-time finish for FC Haka
The mission for the Football Ferns is as simple as playing as many games as possible, ideally against teams of a similar and competitive standard, giving themselves maximum room for growth before the World Cup next year
Our wills and fates do so contrary run, as a clever chap once wrote. The All Whites went to Doha and they proved that they were good enough to qualify for the 2022 FIFA World Cup but it just wasn’t to be
Big yarns boiling in the Flying Kiwis Transfer Season pot as Sarpreet Singh was, according to reports in Germany, on the brink of a permanent move to Werder Bremen…