Friday night at Fred Taylor Park marked the start of the 2026 football season in New Zealand, as defending National League champs Auckland United were hosted by defending NRFL Premiership champs West Coast Rangers
In an ideal world, Darren Bazeley would have picked a shadow version of his intended World Cup squad for these games so that he could chase some serious results against Finland and Chile.
Celtic Park was the destination for Motherwell, where they faced arguably the biggest game of their season thus far. If they could repeat the 2-0 win they served up to Celtic a couple of months ago then…
Ben Waine loves a dose of cup footy. Always has. But none of his past exploits compare to what he did over the past week.
The Football Ferns don’t lose games in Oceania. The last time they played within the region was the Olympic Qualifying tournament in 2024, almost exactly two years ago, and they won all five games with 32 goals scored and 1 goal against
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…
These are fascinating times for the Wellington Phoenix Academy. Having gone deep into their Development Club mindset a few seasons back, they immediately experienced the best-case-scenario of how that can work…
Ben Old is a left-back now, he’s even admitting it himself. Not a winger playing out of position but a genuine converted option having played nothing but fullback for the past two months.
The bad news for Motherwell is that if they want to win a trophy this season, it’s going to have to be the Premiership. The good news is that they might genuinely be in the league title race after another week of very helpful results.
The results may not have been very balanced but tell ya what there’s never been a boring NZ Derby. All six of these games have been bursting with fascination and intrigue and filled with crazy moments.
In a season where Hearts are seriously threatening to bust up the Old Firm hold on the title, it’s Motherwell that have become the darlings of Scottish football and Elijah Just has been a big part of that.
After waiting more than half of the Championship season for a proper Flying Kiwi head to head (Crocombe vs Bindon last week), we got another one straight afterwards (Crocombe vs Cacace). Millwall versus Wrexham, two clubs challenging for playoff places.
Gather round, everyone, it’s time for a new round of Football Ferns activities. The Fernies are about to take the next step in their World Cup cycle by playing some actual World Cup Qualifiers.
If there’s one thing that this country never seems to lack, it’s goalkeepers. There’s been a goalkeeping debate every time that the All Whites have made it to the FIFA World Cup. Never lacking for glovemen.
It wasn’t going to do anyone any good for Clegg to spend another year sitting on the bench. Hence she’s left. Hence she’s signed a two-year contract with Vittsjö GIK in Sweden.
After four seasons without ever making the A-League finals, an unlikely set of circumstances contrived to present the Wellington Phoenix Women with an Olympic Games gold medallist as their new head coach.
That’s three games in a row with a goal contribution for Just, having assisted goals in each of Motherwell’s previous fixtures. The Steelmen are five points behind Celtic (3rd) and five points ahead of Hibernian (5th).
Max Crocombe was a few weeks shy of his 30th birthday when he debuted in League One with Burton Albion. Now he’s 32 years old and starting games for a Millwall team pushing for promotion from the Championship and he’s about to go to a World Cup later in the year.
For almost two months we didn’t see Libby Cacace in action at all. Even before that he was in and out of the team amidst recurring muscle injuries – the first time in his entire career that he’d been stuck with injuries, probably in part due to his lack of a preseason.
There aren’t many All Whites (or Football Ferns either, for that matter), who can claim to have had a better 2025 than Elijah Just. In fact, you can stretch that out to the last 18 months... and there’s no end in sight.