Marist 2
Naenae 1
Capital
Division 1
Kilbirnie
Park
Saturday
23rd April 2016
Attendance
about 20
This
is grassroots football, a public park next to the main road to the
airport, one referee, no linesmen, about 20 people watching the game
(well 30 if you include the subs bench) and I ended up being the
ball boy!
This
is Capital Division 1, the equivalent of the 4th tier of
NZ football, a league where most players have to pay $200-300 just to
play. A league where players main focus isn't necessarily football as
shown by a post on the Marist Facebook page bemoaning the fact only 6
first team players turned up for training during the week – and we
aren't even into the cold winter nights yet!
This was a game between the 1st teams of two Wellington
clubs. Marist are one of the oldest, being formed 120 years ago in
1896. They have seen a bit of success winning the Chatham Cup twice
(1932 & 46) and Wellington Division one 6 times. Most of this
came in the 1930's and 40's. They spent most of their time in
Wellington Division 1 & 2 only joining the Central League in 1992
and spending 6 years in Central League Division 2, they have had some
recent success winning Capital Division One in 2001,04 & 09.
Naenae
from the Lower Hutt suburb in the Hutt Valley, were formed in 1948.
They joined Central League Division 2 in 1968 and have spent most of
their history around the lower Central League divisions and more
recently in Capital 1. The club's only major honour coming in 2008
when they won the Capital 1 Division (although the women's team did
win the Kelly Cup in 1998).
You
never know what to expect at games at this level, but that's the
beauty of it, you could get an awful game or a 7 goal thriller. Given
the level I was not expecting to see brilliant silky skill on show
(but in NZ when do you ever expect to see that!), the one thing I
should have expected in Wellington was a game affected by the wind.
The wind today was one that many outside Wellington would describe as
strong, however to Wellingtonian's it was just a bit of a gusty
breeze! It did mean that the game would be played mostly in one half.
Naenae
were playing into the wind in the first half and seemed to be dealing
with it well until the 16th minute when the ball fell to
Marist's Ben Pitson just outside the penalty area and he hit a sweet
shot into the net. Naenae keeper, Donny Stoupe, was stunned and
exclaimed “how the hell did that happen?”
 |
| Ben Pitson after hitting his shot for the first goal |
3
minutes later Naenae equalised through Sam Stephens. Marist had the
wind but never really threatened the Naenae goal and at half time I
was thinking Naenae would be the team to take this game out as they
looked slightly better and had the wind in the second half.
Games
like these can be decided by a single moment of magic and thats what
happened in this game, typically it was at the opposite end to where
I was, when Connor Boyd scored a screamer that he will be talking
about for the rest of the season (and possibly longer!). Then it was
a full on defensive effort from Marist, up against the wind and a
determined Naenae side, they kept coming up with the goods and the
decisive tackles. They survived a credible penalty shout, before ref
Barry Buchannan must have felt bad about not giving it so gave a
dubious penalty instead.
The Marist keeper, Andrew Cresswell, managed
to make a soft penalty look difficult to save but did great to keep
out the rebounded shot.
 |
| Naenae's poorly taken penalty |
 |
| Andrew Cresswell saves the rebounded penalty shot |
Then Marist captain Sean Murphy was sent off
for a second bookable offence, keeping up my record this season of
seeing a player sent off in every game I have gone to! Marist fought
hard and held fast for their first win of the season and I had an
enjoyable day at the football.
As always I have taken some photos click this link to see them all
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