If you’re of a certain age you’ll remember that New Zealand once had a weekly football newspaper. Soccer Express it was called. One day recently I was sorting out all the crap in my garage and came across several boxes of old football mags. One rather large box was loaded with ancient issues of Shoot! which, unfortunately for them, didn’t maintain the sort of value that saved them from the skip. But a smaller box,...
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Just as everyone was giving it the big #myseason2014 last weekend I was at the beach. Saturday April 5 was the designated opening day of the 2014 winter season. I was in Auckland and had a plethora of games to choose from. The NRFL scheduling, in fact, was perfect as I could easily have taken in a Waikato club double header. Wanderers were at Glenfield Rovers (the place I kicked off my 2013 season) at 2.45pm then Melville United were...
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Crazy Cyclone Lusi was supposed to strike NZ this weekend, so I cancelled all my plans, which chiefly involved a couple of nights up at Cooks Beach on the Coromandel Peninsula, and stayed home. That meant I could wander down to the Matamata Domain five minutes before kick-off to check-out the latest instalment in Matamata Swifts’ re-birth as a senior club. But I was worried. This weekend the storm to end all storms was supposed...
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There are less than 100 days to go now until Brazil kicks off the 2014 World Cup. As a Spurs fan, a supporter of a team whose season is pretty much over, I can’t wait for the world’s best players to turn up in Rio, Sao Paulo, Manaus and all parts in between. I managed to make it to the last two World Cups, in Germany and South Africa, but I won’t be in Brazil. My wife and I are due to have our third kid in a couple...
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In the last 24 hours I’ve seen some of the worst individual mistakes made by professional defenders that you’ll ever see. The Sydney derby in the Hyundai A-League featured a cracking atmosphere with over 40,000 people in attendance. It also saw the visitors, Western Sydney Wanderers, pretty much dominate the hosts, Sydney FC, yet lose 3-1. Why? Three horrendous errors. A flappy keeper, a horribly under-hit back pass and a...
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Answer me this: how does a club that has won this country’s national league four years in a row – basically the Manchester United of our league – have virtually no fans? That question has been bugging me since I was at Fred Taylor Park earlier in the season with WaiBOP United and the ASB Premiership semi-final, a ‘Super City Derby’ no less, had me asking it again. There were less than 200 there for the...
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Now that WaiBOP United’s involvement in the ASB Premiership is at an end I’ve got a little more time on my hands so I reckon I should get the Bus back on the road and kick this blog back into life. As the Bus has been pretty well parked up for the longest time it’ll take a bit to get it back to roadworthiness. But after a thorough servicing, a warrant (which, I’m sure, will be passed with ease) and a quick zap...
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Matamata Swifts AFC is my club because Matamata is where I’m from. Simple really. I played my junior football at the club. I played football there as a callow youth. I played most of my senior football there. And I’ve held just about every committee position known to man there. It’s fair to say I’ve done my time and I’ve done it willingly. Matamata Swifts is a small country club that has occasionally punched above its weight. Often...
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Every time I visit a match I’ll take a minute long movie so readers can get a feel for the venue. In the latest in our One Minute At… series we’re at Bluewater Stadium in Napier. We were there for the ASB Premiership between Hawke’s Bay United and WaiBOP United, played on Saturday January 25, 2014. The game finished 3-2 to Hawke’s Bay United.
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Sometimes, even if you’re quite heavily involved with a team, it’s nice to be able to sit back and analyse a game of football as objectively as you can and appreciate it for what it was – a decent game of football. As annoying as WaiBOP United’s 3-2 loss at Hawke’s Bay United was I thought it had pretty much everything you could hope for in a match of ASB Premiership standard – goals (and some...
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