The Kalezic era is coming apart like the performances of the Wellington Phoenix with Darije in charge. The head coach has effectively resigned, which may be the first effective thing he’s managed all season. But even in doing so, there’s six whole games left of a team who haven’t played […]
By Andrew French When I agreed to do a post for Phoenix home games, I thought – why not? In an hour on the pod, we often don’t get to cover everything that we want to and a long form post would be a good opportunity to flesh out the […]
[Eastern Suburbs asked me to contribute a regular match day programme column for the duration of their first season back in the national league football fray. My brief was to be “slightly controversial or provocative”. Half joking, I told them they could call the series ‘Enzo’s Rant’ and to my surprise they agreed! […]
Wellington Phoenix 2, Western Sydney Wanderers 2 Mount Smart Stadium, Auckland, December 17 2016 5,702 was the official attendance at Mount Smart Stadium last night. In a city of 1.3 million people, only 5,702 of them could be bothered coming to watch a top class football game on a beautiful […]
Wellington Phoenix 3, Central Coast Mariners 0 Waikato Stadium, Hamilton, December 10 2016 Unlike my abysmal record watching Waikato teams live, my record at Phoenix games is quite good. I very rarely see them lose. So my presence on the sidelines, as New Zealand’s only professional football team played their […]
Wellington Phoenix 4, Hamilton Wanderers 0 Waikato Stadium, Hamilton, December 10 2016 It took ten years for me to witness a Waikato FC/WaiBOP United victory with my own eyes in the franchise based men’s national league. And for a good nine of those ten years of misery, the performances I […]
By Andrew French So, why am I putting this out into the digital ether? Well, I suspect the Phoenix are entering a seminal moment in their brief history. To some, this may seem a strange thing to say in light of the certainty of the newly secured 10 year (4+3+3) […]
[Yellow Fever and Liverpool Football Club Wellington are celebrating ten years of the Phoenix by asking people to rank their top ten Phoenix players to raise awareness for the Wellington City Mission’s ten most needed items list. I thought it would be fun to ask Cordwainer Bull to give us […]
[Written in response to this anonymous post on Australian site ‘The Roar’.] By Patrick Barnes After a year of constant criticism from the FFA of everything the Phoenix were doing, I believe 2016-17 will be a bounce back season. In many ways the Phoenix mirror a more New Zealand community, more […]
In Spain they call it ‘la manita’, the little hand. Five goals, without reply. When Barcelona put five past Real Madrid in 2010, the pictures in the papers the next day were of Pique, Busquets and Puyol with their hands raised towards their supporters. The Phoenix had scored a finger […]