The Wellington Phoenix’s unbeaten start to the A-League Men’s season came thumping to a tortured end on Saturday night as they were dropped 3-0 at home by the Newcastle Jets
There were happier ways that the Football Ferns could have brought the historic year that was 2023 to a conclusion... but this was probably the most truthful way.
Not gonna lie, we were skating on some thin ice with the Flying Kiwis this week. The ladies were all on international break and the fellas weren’t getting up to much... until Matthew Garbett
Multiple Football Ferns coaches over the past decade have talked about trying to modernise the way the team plays. More passing, more movement off the ball, more creativity. That kinda thing
Just prior to neither CJ Bott nor Ria Percival being included in the latest Football Ferns squad, they went head to head in the English Women’s Super League
The cliche is that defence wins championships and cliches are usually cliches for a reason. The two best defences in the Women’s National League met in the grand final at Mt Smart Stadium on Sunday.
Last year, Wellington Olympic made the National League grand final but, despite a courageous performance, were beaten 3-2 by Auckland City. This year, Wellington Olympic made the National League grand final and again they played Auckland City. This time they triumphed.
Brace yourself folks because this right here is the most fascinating Football Ferns squad we’ve been handed for a very long time. Even the World Cup squad didn’t compare to this one.
Sometimes you’ve just gotta let things simmer for a wee while. Wait until the full picture is visible. There seemed to be a lot of negativity around the All Whites after a relatively dull 2-0 defeat against Greece…
The final round of fixtures in the men’s competition provided dead rubber on top of dead rubber. The lads still offered some almighty excitement along the way... but the women’s comp was where it was truly at in week nine
Somehow we’re at the end of the season already. Pretty sure it only just started but nah there was only this one last chance remaining for each team to leave it all out on the pitch... or whatever their coaches wanna say
The bad news for Ben Waine is that he was back on the bench this week for the visit to Leeds. The good news is that he still got a decent run off the bench and was able to do this...
They’re all big games when it comes to National League football but some are even bigger than others. When we’re talking about Christchurch United against Cashmere Technical under lights on a Friday night, big becomes massive.
As this eighth round kicked off it was entirely possible that any combination of four different teams would make the grand final… and a couple of them just happened to be playing against each other
What do we want to see from a couple more All Whites games? That’s not an easy question to answer without making big picture generalisations about how it’s important to keep playing regular fixtures, especially against higher-ranked opponents
Back to regularly scheduled programming with the Flying Kiwis, let’s get at it. And we must begin by reaching all the way back to the very start of that catchment timeframe when the brother Marko Stamenic did this…
Doesn’t get any bigger... at least not until the grand final. Second place against third. The past six weeks have been like a seedling taking root and slowly branching out and now with this game we had the blossoms on display
Welcome to week seven of the New Zealand Women’s National League... in which the relentless march towards the final continued
The closeness of this competition heading into the final month... tell ya what. Eastern Suburbs getting popped last week means that every team has lost at least once, in fact five separate teams had lost exactly once prior to this round
Dominion Road is bending. City versus United. Manchester had their own edition of that game on the weekend but it was a pale imitation compared to the NZ National League’s version