A football season that began with a couple of postponed cup finals way back in March finally came to an end a week before Christmas as Eastern Suburbs and Western Springs met in the Women’s National League Grand Final
That pesky World Cup break for the blokes and some offseason chilling for a lot of the ladies means that Flying Kiwis hasn’t been so regular lately, so it goes, but we’re back in the swing of it now folks
By a strange quirk of fate, the final round of the season kicked off with a meeting between the two grand finalists. Eastern Suburbs were already guaranteed first and Western Springs already guaranteed second so…
The A-League Men’s returns from its World Cup hiatus this weekend. Bit of a pause in proceedings to watch the Socceroos do their best against Argentina, see Welly Nix old boy Cammy Devlin gap it out of Qatar with Lionel Messi’s match-worm jersey
Into the penultimate round of the season and there was one major issue that we were yet to sort out: who’d be joining Eastern Suburbs in the grand final. Realistically it was always going to be Western Springs but…
They did it. Auckland City began the National League as favourites and they finished it as champions. Chuck it onto the pile alongside the Northern League, Oceania Champions League, and Chatham Cup titles that they’d already won this year
The fellas wrapped things up this week with the exception of the grand final on Sunday. The ladies still have a couple more weeks to go meaning that, just like the start of the campaign, they’re about to get the spotlight all to themselves again
And so we arrive at the final round of the season, one last set of fixtures before the fellas can start spending their weekends doing the holiday shopping instead. Maybe head to the beach for a week
Clearly Vic Esson is a machine because less than a week after she saved that late penalty for the Football Ferns against South Korea she was lining up in goal for the biggest game of Rangers’ SWPL campaign so far
One more week of Men’s National League to go (plus a grand final). Like a summer holiday, it’s almost over when it feels like it’d only just begun.
Friday night as Seddon Fields, definitely the best time to be at Seddon Fields. Under the lights and out on the turf. Listen closely and you can sometimes hear the animals from the zoo down the road
Ideally the Wellington Phoenix would have celebrated their first ever (proper) home game with a memorable win. Realistically they were always up against it facing a Melbourne City team that finished second on the ladder last term
We didn’t get the wins that we were hoping for. Instead we got a 1-0 loss followed by a 1-1 draw in the two-game series against South Korea in Christchurch. But you know what? That’s a pretty decent outcome.
This will not have been a game that the Central girls were circling on the calendar. First versus last on the ladder, with Eastern Suburbs having beaten them 8-0 in the reverse fixture. At least they were at home this time
With twenty-two players all locked and loaded, the Wellington Phoenix are ready for their second season in the A-League Women’s. Some of those players are new to the team, many are returning from year one
How about Melville United? Bit of a slog over the first month of the National League but they’ve figured out their groove these past two weeks with wins over Christchurch United and Birkenhead. Scoring goals in the process
The Woodsman giving it a knee slide on a rainy afternoon on England’s south coast, that’s what we wanna see. Prior to the weekend’s game away against Southampton, Chris Wood had only scored once all season
We began this week in Christchurch, English Park to be more specific, as Cashmere Technical sought to apply their litmus test to Napier City Rovers. The litmus test being that…
The eighth week of this competition delivered the reverse fixtures of the first week of this competition. Safe to say that plenty has happened since then
The last time the Footy Ferns played was only a few weeks ago. October 9 in Nagano, they lost 2-0 to Japan. That result was about as expected and we didn’t really learn anything new, although the team did at least get…