Fencies

Posted by Enzo Giordani in Lower League Football, NRFL - Women's Premier, Women's Football and tagged with , , , , ,

Fencibles United 8, Papamoa FC 0
Riverhills Park, Auckland, May 27 2012

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It has been a couple of months since I was in the Bay of Plenty for Papamoa’s opening game of their 2012 season against Claudelands Rovers. At that time they were a new side with a lot of very young players. They unsurprisingly struggled to hold their own against a team brimming with New Zealand internationals both age group and senior.

I was keen to catch up with them again to see if or how they have improved. Their opposition today should have been a much better match for them. Fencibles were third from bottom before this game but even though they are a much weaker side than Claudelands, they still have a goal difference of -12 compared to Papamoa’s -48 so it was always going to be difficult for the visitors, especially considering Papamoa appeared to be missing some of the better players that I saw in action at Gordon Spratt Reserve. Why, I didn’t get a chance to find out. Injuries presumably.

It wasn’t much of a contest and by half time, with the score at 3-0 to the home side, to be brutally honest I was already beginning to regret not going to the top of the table clash over in Glenfield instead.

Never mind, I did enjoy being at my first ever game at Riverhills Park, home of Fencibles United, a big South East Auckland club with what appears on the surface a very interesting history. Their logo and red and white shirts mimic the old uniforms of the Royal New Zealand Fencibles Corps, original settlers of East Auckland who were a group of former British Army soldiers that migrated to New Zealand to provide a sort of militia for the security of other settlers during colonial times.

The name Fencibles is short for defensibles and couldn’t have been more apt today. Their goal proved very defensible as their clean sheet can attest and their strikers had the freedom to fire at will. Having said that, it’s hard to draw too many conclusions from a game like this and how much confidence ‘Fencies’ can take out of this one I’m not too sure. But they looked a pretty solid side that should probably have a better record than they do. They now sit in 6th place and their match against 5th placed Pukekohe next week should be quite telling indeed.

A derby named Rodney

Posted by Enzo Giordani in Lower League Football, NZ Northern Division 2 and tagged with , , , , ,

Hibiscus Coast AFC 3, Warkworth AFC 0
Stanmore Bay Park, Hibiscus Coast, May 26 2012

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As I drove up to the Whangaparoa Peninsula for today’s local derby between Hibiscus Coast and Warkworth, I was pondering what’s in a name. All the great derbies of the world have great handles. In Spain, Barcelona and Real Madrid play the ‘Classico’. In Argentina, River Plate and Boca Juniors play the ‘Superclassico’. Rangers and Celtic make up the ‘Old Firm’ in Glasgow. Italian derby names are in my completely unbiased opinion by far the coolest. Milan and Inter play the Derby della Madonnina – named for the little statue of the Virgin Mary on the top of the Milan Cathedral. Genoa and Sampdoria play the Derby della Lanterna – named for the lighthouse by the Port of Genoa. Roma and Napoli play the Derby del Sole, Derby of the Sun – named after the Highway of the Sun that connects Rome with Naples.

Perhaps if New Zealand derbies had cooler names, even in the Northern Regional Football League Division 2, the public might take more notice. Three obvious options spring to mind for this one. The North Auckland Derby – because both these teams come from the far North of the ‘Super City’. Booooooring. The Derby of the Holiday Highway – after the controversial new road between Orewa (on the Hibiscus Coast) and Warkworth that the government is pouring millions of dollars into so that their wealthy backers can access their holiday homes on the beaches of the Far North. A bit of a mouthful. Or simply Rodney – after the Rodney District that both these clubs are based in. ‘Rodney the Derby’. Short. Punchy. Quirky. I like. Rodney it is.

Rodney was played today at Hibiscus Coast’s scenic home ground of Stanmore Bay Park. The venue is right on the beachfront, so close to the water that spectators standing behind the goal could be forgiven for wearing swimwear in case they are required to fetch a wayward shot that has sailed over the crossbar at high tide. The clubrooms have a large extended deck that allows a great view of both the game and the Pacific Ocean. A pretty neat place to watch football.

Winning Rodney was always going to be a tough ask for Warkworth this time around. Hibiscus Coast, 2 points clear at the top of the league, went into this game with 8 wins, no draws and only two losses. Fifth placed Warkworth had won 5, drawn 2 and lost 3.

Apart from a brief period of the beginning of the second half, possession wise this match was all Hibiscus Coast. But Warkworth defended well in the first half and managed to frustrate their opponents. As the pressure built on the home side to convert their chances, they began to look quite rattled and with the score still locked at 0-0 at half time, some of their players were finding it difficult to keep their frustrations to themselves. This only got worse as Warkworth came out after the break and enjoyed a spell of sustained pressure and could have easily grabbed the lead but for some poor finishing. However it was Hibiscus Coast who finally broke the deadlock with their first chance of the second spell and the floodgates opened from there.

Warkworth will be disappointed with their performance but can look forward to the return leg on the very last day of the season when they may well be able to pinch the last laugh – especially if the title is riding on the result. It might yet all come down to the derby named Rodney!

Fanning the flames

Posted by Enzo Giordani in Roma, Serie A and tagged with , , , , ,

Walter Sabatini

“Streaming is proving difficult. And will I take this sign from the gods and spend the next two hours doing something healthy? No.” – @chiesaditotti

“A scudetto at Roma is worth ten at Milan or Juventus.” This is the iron law of Roma that Romanisti had hoped would begin to become just a tiny bit more flexible in 2011/12. Instead, this was the season that Fabio Capello’s immortal words felt like the legislative equivalent of the law of gravity. Stop, start, flourish, wilt, will, won’t, do, don’t, beat the best, crumble like a dried leaf in the hands of the worst, play like Barcelona one week and Matamata Swifts over 35s the next. Those are the themes of a typical Roma season and have been for 80+ years. Was it ever really likely to substantially change over the course of a grand total of one season? All we knew back in August was we had new owners, new management, a new manager, a whole new squad, more monetary resources than we’d ever had before, and above all, we had a project.

 “It will be a hell of a championship, let’s be prepared to fight for any place in the ranking: but WE have a project, others…” – @CarloRM61

 ‘The project’ – two words we have heard a heck of a lot in the past 12 months: “the project begins”, “the project continues”, “we must have patience with the project” and “the project lives on”. What did it mean? Was there a plan chiselled into a stone tablet somewhere in an underground bunker beneath Trigoria or was this simply yet another way to heap on more pressure at a club where you would never have known that to be possible? All we know for certain is that it began at the end of last season when Thomas Roberto Di Benedetto took the club over from the Sensi family. At the beginning, the project was about a new dawning, not just with any new owner, but the first foreign owner of any club in Italy. It was about starting from scratch with a blank piece of paper. In the eyes of the fans and the media however, the meaning of the phrase seemed to evolve over the course of the season to become something much more specific.

 “It’s the reverse of Ranieri’s Roma, really; we play well but don’t score. Under CR we scored but everyone was like “how?”” – @blogistuta

One of the first things ‘the project’ needed was someone to execute it on the pitch. An extensive search was undertaken to find the right sort of manager. Amongst the names being floated around the traps were Marcello Bielsa, Andre Villas Boas, Carlo Ancelotti and the man who eventually won the role – Luis Enrique. Enrique was an intriguing choice. Coach of Barcelona B, he had never managed top flight football and never played or managed outside Spain. He was apparently, we were told, brought in to replicate the Barcelona system in Italy. This was where ‘the project’ seemed to morph to the point where it appeared to be distilled down to as much about Roma playing Barcelona style football as anything else. Was it ever really meant to be that prescriptive? The success of the paella would depend at least in part on the quality of the ingredients the new chef would be given to cook with.

“Things I want to see second half: Erik. Lamela.” – @JulianDeMar

The sort of summer transfer windows we are used to at Roma are high on rumour and short on news. Fans pontificate for months about this player and that with discussion revolving around which superstars of the game are available, who we want and who we would turn our noses up at. Of course most never come. The most important off-season recruit of all was Walter Sabatini – the new Director of Football and the one man alive (for the time being) who smokes more than Rosella Sensi. Sabatini had a mandate for change that none of his predecessors could ever have imagined. The proverbial guts were ripped out of our previous starting line-up as good players who had served us well filed out the door and into the dustbin of history. Out went Philippe Mexes, John Arne Riise, Alexander Doni, Jeremy Menez, Mirko Vucinic, Matteo Brighi, Julio Sergio, Marco Borriello, Stefano Okaka, and David Pizarro. In came Jose Angel, Gabriel Heinze, Bojan Krkic, Marteen Stekelenberg, Erik Lamela, Pablo Osvaldo, Miralem Pjanic, Simon Kjaer, Fernando Gago, Fabio Borini and Marquinho (winter). The old era was swept away in one fell swoop by an entire new playing XI of exciting and talented youth.

“Next days I’ll envy you, my dear Romanisti friends from the rest of the world, for not having to suffer the inevitable mocking by “BURINI”” – @CarloRM61

The season began as you would expect with a club that was a blank piece of paper only a few months beforehand. Slowly. But what struck me the most early on was just how little transition there was. Take the round 6 starting line-up that faced Lazio in the first derby della capitale of the season. Only 2 players, De Rossi and Perrotta, had ever experienced a Rome derby before. This was a choice, not a necessity. There were still experienced derby performers on the bench albeit with Totti out injured. This to me was symptomatic of the arguable fact that too much changed too fast. ‘The project’ is a long term one – we all get that, but would it not have been better for long term prospects if new players had played alongside experienced ones? Surely this was an opportunity for the new kids to learn off the old hands and hopefully pick up how to play in this unique environment. The fact that we lost the game was not in itself cause for concern – you win some, you lose some but with an inexperienced defender red carded and penalised, the manner of the defeat made the loss seem all too avoidable.

“ah ah ah ah Totti singing “Tutti al mareeee” (a classic summer song!) LOL!” – @Di_Elle

Come Christmas, our record wasn’t too bad under the circumstances. Won seven, drawn three and lost six. Victories against Atalanta, Napoli and Bologna stood out as good showings and with the last two coming in the previous two matches, we tucked into our Christmas turkey feeling like a corner had been turned. The football was pretty to watch if you like that sort of thing… I myself find good defending pretty to watch. It saddens me that Italy doesn’t seem to produce great defenders anymore – a situation that would have been unthinkable twenty years ago. In 1991/92, the top ten Serie A clubs conceded an average of 32 goals over the course of the season. In 2011/12 it was 43. Roma scored 60 goals this season, only 8 fewer than the champions and 8 more than third placed Udinese. But we conceded 54 to Juventus’ 20 and Udinese’s 35. Pretty football makes you feel great when it’s also winning football, but when my team is losing, the most dazzling passing game on earth makes me feel nothing but sick to my stomach.

 “LE should just go the post-match presser with a shirt on that says “shut up and let me work””
– ‏@theoren91

Going through the results and remembering the games, it really is a struggle to find the best period of the season. Great performances were interspersed with terrible ones throughout the term. A good example of this is our 4-0 demolition of Inter in February. Beating the Nerazzurri like that really made my year, especially after Lucio’s disgraceful deliberate kick to the skull of Marteen Stekelenberg the last time the two sides had met. Inter have evolved over the last few seasons into a club I dislike more than Lazio, but this game had me singing “can we play you every week?” Looking at the other games around that period bring back terrible memories though. A frustrating draw at home against Bologna, a 4-2 loss at Cagliari (even if the only truly shocking thing about that should have been that Daniele Conti didn’t score) and getting knocked out of the Coppa Italia 3-0 by Juventus. Urgh.

  “I need to develop new insults during HT. I feel like the ones I’m using aren’t harsh enough to express my extreme hatred.” – @aristeia

Derby 2 was almost a carbon copy of derby 1. The main difference being Stek was the villain rather than Kjaer. His dismissal for bringing Miroslav Klose down in the penalty area before ten minutes of the game were up effectively ended the contest before it got going and handed Lazio their first double over Roma in 14 years. The game was somewhat marred by Lazio fans making racist monkey noises at Juan. Much faux outrage ensued, but nothing could distract from the humiliation of Lazio vaulting 10 points clear of Roma in the Serie A standings. A club like ours can never expect to play Champions League Football every year, but if you can’t win the league and you can’t make Europe, then the absolute bare minimum expected of any Roma squad in any season is to beat Lazio in the derbies and/or finish ahead of them on the table. That we missed on every count made our failure as absolute as anything short of relegation.

“BORINI IS BLEEDING FROM THE EYE LIKE THE STIGMATA.” – @aristeia

It’s difficult to fairly judge a completely new squad as individuals. When a new player is brought into an established group there are surely a limited number of variables. At this level nobody is, as they say, ‘rubbish’. There are only players that flourish in a club’s system and those who don’t. But what is Roma’s system? Nobody really knows yet. Individuals stood out. Lamela is obviously a class act. Others such as Bojan seemed to struggle for consistency. However it’s at the defensive end where most of the questions are rightly being asked. In my view this was not because we had bad defenders, but more because we called on them to do too much. Our midfield was too attacking and staggeringly vulnerable to the counterattack. De Rossi was heroic but he needs help. No club can rely so heavily on one player and expect success. Before we look at wholesale change in the back four, I would have thought a holding midfielder or two should be priority one.

 “What are Fiorentina doing? Oh, defending.” – @JefreyH

The fourth quarter of the season was dominated by ‘will we or won’t we make the champions League’. It should have been obvious we were never going to get there. That we came as close as we did was mainly a testament to how awful the other contenders really were. We seemed to achieve nothing apart from piling more and more pressure on ourselves week by week as we obsessed about European football. I am quite taken with the way Roberto Mancini went about helping Manchester City, another new big club that has recently started from scratch, win the English Premier League this season. He did what politicians call ‘managing expectations’. He constantly played down City’s chances by saying they had no chance of winning the league. He didn’t do that to play mind games with Sir Alex Fergusson, nor to motivate his players. He did it to take the pressure off a club renowned for choking and it worked a treat. The beginning of the end of the end for Roma was the 4-2 loss at Lecce on July 8. From that point on we achieved the type of consistency nobody wants as the performances got progressively worse. The painful thing is the gap to third was mostly only 3, 4, 5 points. A real lost opportunity.

“#Roma may have given up 3 goals but at least they have created zero chances and had no discernible offensive flow” – @gregc9

With the season over, it almost feels like we are back where we started. Luis Enrique has quit and much of the talk is that Vincenzo Montella, our 2010/11 coach, is on the way back after a successful spell at Catania. The phrase “the more things change, the more they stay the same” could not seem more apt. Fans have been blogging and tweeting a lot in the past couple of weeks about how we need a complete culture shift and only a total cleanout will do it, as if the act of selling all the players that played in the Sensi era will in itself solve all our problems. Trouble is, it’s not just players who make a culture. I don’t believe that our problem this year was not enough change. On the contrary, you need a balance of both continuity and change, particularly if you are not going to have patience with a team that doesn’t produce instant results. Montella may be just what we need. He can address that balance in a way nobody else can, having ties to the past but not being shackled to it.

When Capello made his comment about a scudetto at Roma being worth ten at Milan or Juventus, he was referring to the pressure to succeed at Roma. The weight of expectations you have to bear in the Eternal City doesn’t exist to the same degree elsewhere. This was, to him, the biggest barrier to success in Rome. If we want a complete culture change we should remember that as fans we are a massive part of the culture of our club. Perhaps, as Gandhi recommended, we must BE the change we want to see in the world. Or am I asking too much?

“No tweet of mine is likely fit to be in a blog post.” – @aristeia

The future

Posted by Enzo Giordani in Lower League Football, NZ Northern Premier League and tagged with , , , , ,

East Coast Bays AFC 4, Melville United 1
Bays City Park, Auckland, May 19 2012

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Another Saturday, another array of Northern Regional Football League matches to choose from! Today I decided to head up to the Northern limits of what we used to refer to as North Shore City in the old days, to watch second placed Premier League club East Coast Bays take on 8th placed Melville United.

Both sides were desperate for the points. Bays sat 6 points adrift of league leaders Bay Olympic going into the match and needed the win to stay in touch with the top. Although the season is still only just getting started, Melville will be beginning to get nervous about the potential for relegation. They also find themselves 8 points behind their local rivals Hamilton Wanderers. That won’t be sitting well with the outfit that boasts the bulk of the Waikato FC squad as well as the best coach in the region in Declan Edge.

As he did with Waikato FC, Edge has built this Melville side out of young local talent and sticks religiously to possession based football. Before the game he told me that his focus is on developing players over five or six years rather than a sixteen game season, an attitude he feels New Zealand Football has lacked to its detriment throughout its history. I agree.

Declan cops a lot of criticism for his leadership style and his youth focussed selection policies. Most of it is unfair in my opinion. For starters, there is a real paucity of others in the Waikato region prepared to step forward and do the jobs that he takes on with gusto. Secondly, it’s a bit of a contradiction to criticise his ego and his commitment to the long term at the same time. Surely if it was all about Declan, he’d be looking for quick success.

The Northern Regional Football League should not exist for people to seek glory from. Winning at this level should be celebrated but not pursued at all costs. This should be a development league that produces the next generation of players for the NZFC, the A-League and beyond.

Today was not as one-sided as the score suggests. In fact, it was a very even match to the point where some might argue Melville dominated for large spells. The future looks pretty bright to me.

Scarves on Statues – Cain and Abel

Posted by Enzo Giordani in Azzurri, Scarves on Statues and tagged with , , , , ,

When I said no more Roma Scarves on Statues for the time being, did you think I meant no Scarves on Statues at all? If so, tricked ya!

We are only 3 weeks away from UEFA Euro 2012 and Italy’s shock return to the top of the world’s football rankings courtesy of a crushing victory over Germany in the final – remember you heard it here first.

Here is an image I have just managed to extract out of my crystal ball. In it, you can clearly see Daniele De Rossi, standing over the distraught figure of Miroslav Klose after the final whistle. The Laziale is fine really, just resting on the ground there and I’m sure the stone in Capitano Futuro’s hand is purely cosmetic and would never be used in anger…

[Previous instalments in the ‘Scarves on Statues’ series can be found here]

Taka vs Ngara

Posted by Enzo Giordani in Chatham Cup, Lower League Football, NZ Northern Division 1 and tagged with , , , , ,

Takapuna AFC 4, Ngaruawahia United 1
Taharoto Park, Auckland, May 12 2012

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Since my trip to Centennial Park in Ngaruawahia back in March, I have become something of a Ngara fan. I knew there was a danger of this happening when I went to see them play Mount Albert Ponsonby a few weeks ago. I didn’t go to blog the game, just to enjoy it. I didn’t take my camera because I wanted to be able to concentrate on the match, something you can’t really do when you are trying to get good pictures. Ngara won 3-0 and I found myself out of my seat many times, screaming my encouragement and yelling at the ref. You don’t choose to do these things – they just happen when a team chooses you. Ten minutes from the end of the match, 10 or so supporters who had travelled up from the Waikato for the game took their shirts off and twirled them in the air Phoenix style. That’s when I knew I was in love.

Fast forward to yesterday, the first round proper of the Chatham Cup. Ngaruawahia had drawn fellow Northern Division 1 opponents Takapuna AFC, who they would face away on Auckland’s North Shore. A tough assignment, especially considering the Green Machine lost 6-0 here in round 2 of the league. To make matters worse, Ngara were also handicapped by a couple of key injuries and their first choice goalkeeper, a recent acquisition from Melville United, being cup tied. They did however have their fresh new import – former Everton and England Under 18 star Steve Morrison. I had not seen Steve play before so was looking forward to a real treat there.

As it turned out, this one was a fairly uninspiring contest. Ngara took the early lead with a glancing header from Jason Chewins off a Morrison free kick. Takapuna managed to hit pretty much straight back at the other end, but aside from those two goals, neither side looked especially threatening in the first half, and despite the ground announcer trying to say it was 1-0 to Takapuna at the break, it had in fact remained 1-1. But the wheels fell off for the visitors in the second half and with one or two defensive lapses and some rather interesting goalkeeping, before we knew what had hit us, it was all over bar the shouting. 4-1 the final score.

So Ngaruawahia are out of the Cup and free to focus on the League. Perhaps not the end of the world for a young side, although they will be disappointed. They will bounce back, and as you have probably gathered, this will not be the last time I cover them this season so stay tuned for the next instalment.

Scarves on Statues – Kids

Posted by Enzo Giordani in Roma, Scarves on Statues and tagged with , , , , ,

This statue is in Waihi, a small gold mining town situated at the gateway to the Upper North Island’s holiday playground, the Coromandel Peninsula. The plaque says simply:

“KIDS … Having fun is timeless. All it requires is imagination.”

This weekend is the last round of Italian club football for the 2011/2012 season. The giallorossi have nothing left to play for. This will be my last Roma scarf on a statue for the time being. What 2012/2013 will bring, we can only imagine.

[Previous instalments in the ‘Scarves on Statues’ series can be found here]

Barcode Bliss

Posted by Enzo Giordani in Roma, Serie A and tagged with , , , , ,

Mirko Vučinić

With the Serie A title decided today, my sincere congratulations go to Juventus, well deserved champions of Italy once again. I must confess myself to be not particularly unhappy with this result. I became used to cheering for Juve while growing up with them as the best Italian hope in the Champions League for many years. Willing them on to European success on so many occasions led to the development of a wee soft spot for la vecchia signora. In any event, I certainly prefer them to Berlusconi’s Milan.

For former Roma players Mirko Vučinić and Marco Borriello too, I am genuinely pleased that they have managed to taste scudetto success even if it couldn’t be with the giallorossi.

As well as handing the title to their nemesis from Turin, today’s victory by Inter in the Milan Derby also put Roma fans out of our misery at long last. It is now mathematically impossible for us to qualify for European competition in any way, shape or form. This has merely confirmed what most tifosi have known for weeks. Despite the points gap being pretty small, the quality of the Lupi’s play had been steadily deteriorating, not improving.

I will write a proper post-mortem on Roma’s season sometime soon, but until then, I will leave you with my favourite Juventus moment. The 1996 Champions League Final. Assisted on the pitch by current coach Antonio Conte and one of my all-time favourite players, Fabrizio Ravanelli, they defeated Ajax on penalties at Rome’s Stadio Olimpico to lift Auld Big Ears for the second time in their history.

Knockout

Posted by Enzo Giordani in Lower League Football, Women's Football, Women's Knockout Cup and tagged with , , , , ,

Lynn-Avon United 3, Papakura City 0
Ken Maunder Park, Auckland, May 6 2012

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Today was the first round of the New Zealand wide Women’s Knockout Cup. This year there are 28 teams battling it out for national supremacy. While fifteen are from Auckland, entries range from Dunedin’s Roslyn Wakari in the Deep South, through to Kerikeri High School representing the Far North. As the name suggests, it’s a standard cup format with winning teams progressing to the next round and losers goneburger until next year. The final is currently scheduled for August 26th.

Given the wealth of Auckland sides vying for the crown, and clubs being grouped into regional conferences to start with, I was pretty spoilt for choice. After much thought and many changes of heart (I used to be indecisive but now I’m not sure), I opted to head over to West Auckland’s Ken Maunder Park to witness top Northern Premiership side and nine time cup winners Lynn-Avon United take on South Auckland’s Papakura City – a solid side that plays in the next tier down from LA, the Auckland Football Federation/Northern Football Federation Conference.

In the context of the whole round, with many of the big guns running away with big wins over lesser opponents, the 3-0 score line here was a veritable thriller. Papakura could easily have had a lead early in the match after they rattled a shot off the crossbar and over the course of the whole match, gave a good account of themselves all things considered. However it was defensive frailties and too much possession easily squandered that saw them undone. Lynn-Avon looked head and shoulders the better of the two sides and probably buttoned off a bit after taking a 2-0 lead into the break.

An enjoyable afternoon in brilliant sunshine though and if you don’t get your butt along to round two and support this very special competition, you really are missing out.

[Unfortunately there was no team sheet available at this fixture so I have to apologise for the lack of names to go alongside my photos. I really do wish I could identify all 1200 odd footballers in Northern Regional Football League by sight, let alone the federation players too. Should have done that Mega Memory course… If anyone feels like identifying the players I have photographed for me, please feel free to comment on the post and I will be rapt to be able to update the captions.]

WHO ARE YA?

Posted by Enzo Giordani in Football in General, Lower League Football and tagged with , , , , ,

Bay Olympic 1, Metro FC 5
Crum Park, Auckland, May 5 2012

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This is not a blog post about football at the highest level in New Zealand. It’s about much bigger heroes than you’ll find there. This is about people who purely and simply love football.

People who have given up to 30 years and more to sport in this country without the recognition they deserve. They coach kids. They volunteer for working bees at their clubs. They sit on committees. They fundraise. Not only have they never received a cent for their services, but they have paid many thousands of dollars in subs over the years for the privilege of contributing to their communities. The money they put into the game not only funds the competitions they play in, it funds the glamour teams their clubs put out, it funds the Northern Regional Football League, it funds the NZFC and it funds the All Whites. Without them, we would have nothing.

This is the Auckland Football Federation over 35′s Division 3 Central/West – this is real grass roots football. Every Saturday in parks up and down New Zealand tens of thousands of football enthusiasts like these guys lace up their boots and prop up our game.

Nobody in this match has ever made a rep side. Most of them have never expected to. They play for the love of the game, the fitness it brings and the cold beer afterwards.

Metro – top of the table. Played three and won three. Bay Olympic’s ‘Westies’ – won one, drawn one and lost one. There is no promotion or relegation at this level. Metro are in that awkward space where they are too good really for division three but would probably get beaten every week in division 2. But nobody minds the score blow-out. Bay gave a good account of themselves defensively in the game but as the older bodies tired late in the second half, the goals started going in.

One player I talked to was wearing a pedometer. He came off with 5 minutes of regular time remaining having taken 9119 steps, covered 6.38 kilometres and burnt 533 calories from right back. A good workout in anyone’s language – especially considering I struggled breathlessly just walking up the hill to the park…

At one point, there was a pileup of players with the ball buried in it somewhere and nobody knew who had put it out. Instead of arguing about it, the two sides talked it through and decided between themselves whether it was a corner or a goal kick.

There was plenty of nice banter back and forth between the two sides, players and officials, players and spectators, players and their own teammates. There were no yellow cards in the game. I don’t think the refs (substitutes from the two sides taking turns with the whistle) owned one.

Laughter, fun and fair play, motivated by little but the love of a good old kick around for its own sake. This is the way football was invented to be played.