ISPS Handa Premiership

Cheers guys!

Think I read somewhere the Waitakere v Hamilton match finished 2-0 Waitakere... 

Total North Island dominance? I will enjoy any win by Canterbury United then!

i mean, I gotta be honest... I don’t see them breaking out of the bottom 2.

Think Weenix will do better than people give them credit for. Maybe 5th?

Yeah I agree with your top 4 picks here. 

I don't rate Hawke's bay that highly this year - losing Killcoly and Delaney, plus Ahinga Selemani. That's 17 goals from last season (53% of last seasons goals) and seem to be full of Napier City rovers and a few Wairarapa players (both teams not overly flash in Central league this year). 

Combine all of that with their massive decline at the end of last season + Hamilton's upswing at the end of last year (not to mention the form of Derek Tieku who was nominated for domestic player of year), for me, Hamilton rate higher than Hawke's bay.

Weenix are the hardest team to place, could be 5th, could be bottom 2... 

For me; 

TW

AC

East

Waitakere

Hamilton 

Weenix

Hawke's Bay/ Canterbury. 

Hawke's Bay have the English lad who played for Wainui this year playing up front for them, he'll score more than a few this season. I'd say if there's a team to break up the expected top 4 this season, it'll be them.

Yeah Hawke's Bay have Gould who you mention and Delhommelle, both of whom have come from abroad and absolutely smashed in the regional leagues. Few other solid acquisitions like Ahmad Othman, JC Mack and Jesse Randall which makes for a stacked front line - not much in terms of defensive reinforcement, though. Again, an unknown quality - could be a playoff dark horse, depends if the new ones fire

If Delhomelle is the guy who got a brace against TeeDubs in the friendly last week, he'll score a few as well. Two excellent finishes.

Yeah the Wainui fella has been banging in goals by the looks of things - I just figured that this is a bit of a step up from Capital Premier & they won't come as easily for him as they have been? 

I had put Hamilton ahead purely because the front line is more proven than the youngsters at Hawke's bay, but I will admit I don't really know too much about them. -Guess I'll find that out come Sunday. 

Do you guys think Easts will keep up with Auckland & Team Wellington this year or will they slot just in behind in that 3rd/4th spot? Curious to know your thoughts there too. 

How good is it that we can watch on YouTube next now too! Exciting stuff. 

Cheers guys

are Nix playing on Fraser and is there rugby markings there?

Yes and yes.

Rule book out the door?

All the squads at the bottom of this article.

https://www.stuff.co.nz/sport/football/domestic/12...

Canterbury United look significantly stronger this season.

There's a lot more goals in them with several new attacking signings.

Four of the squad scored 50 goals between them in the Mainland Prmier League this winter (Matthysen 19, Coughlan 12, Taguchi 10, Max Chretien 9)

I think they will be at least as good as Hamilton, HB and Waitak.

Weenix will struggle due to having no senior Phoenix players available this summer due to being based over in NSW.

New Canterbury signings include three Irishmen from Southern:

Ace goalscorer Garbhan Coughlan, left-back Danny Ledwith and centre-back Stephen Last.

Skilful nippy young winger Seth Clark returns after a spell away at US college.

Young South African-born Lyle Matthysen is a talented winger who has been very good for Cashmere Tech for a few years but has not got the breaks at national league level, exiting early last summer due to injury and not getting on with previous management (hence leaving for a season with Tasman). Was top goal-scorer in the Mainland Premier with 19 goals this winter.

Striker Ihaia Delaney returns to Christchurch where he was born from Hawkes Bay United after a childhood in Brunei, South East Asia then Ole Academy in Wellington etc.

Yuya Taguchi, a 19 year-old professional Japanese striker from the J 3 league (third tier) has been Cashmere Technical's third highest scorer this season with ten goals.

23 appearances, 7 goals in the J 3 league last season.

Yuya's stats: https://www.transfermarkt.com/yuya-taguchi/leistun...

Full Dragons squad:

https://www.facebook.com/CanterburyUnited/posts/10...

Feel vindicated by this tbh. Waitakere did look fantastic as the game went on though - so many agile, technical players in attack and everyone in the squad with that little bit of flair. Canterbury not that bad initially, but looked destroyed by that first goal

have to be honest - bit disappointed in the professionalism of these broadcasts, both in commentary and presentation. Errors in every single line-up display so far - HBU vs Wanderers many players were spelt wrong, Teedubs vs Weenix they showed the squad lists intstead, and for Canty vs. Waitak they accidentally showed the women's league squads (lol).

And come on, it doesn't hurt for the ground announcers + commentators to put a tiny bit of effort into pronunciation. Nothing as egregious as calling Martin Bueno "boo-no" last year, but Delhommelle, Barcia, Garriga and McClean aren't that difficult at all. Getting a lot of second-hand embarrassment, these games are broadcast to the world. Feel a bit off complaining as obviously it's a huge step and a privilege, but we can do better than this

Great to have - though best watched muted

Also mixing up Tieku and Semmy. Super awkies.

Joao and Nat too

Pretty sure Raf said pick up the penis at some point instead of pace (or soemthing to that effect). My 5 yo was there with me and we both laughed hard

I think it was from ‘pick up the pieces’ and it’s on Twitter. 

I guess that's what happens when you take SKY's broadcast skills out of the mix. 

FYI Sky Sport Next is SKY providing the audience and the Code (NZF/Federations) provide the feed and do all the graphics etc.

Have to agree. As I was loading up the Welly derby, I was thinking to myself how great it was to have all matches broadcast and 3 of them being available for free online.

It took all of 2 minutes for my excitement to turn to disinterest.

The camera quality and commentary were appalling. 

I suppose I was expecting similar quality to the Sky broadcast for the ES Vs Akl City but maybe that's unrealistic?

The only sure thing is that the league will gain no new fans from the free YouTube games.

This is on the Tribe app, was this going to be the case? First I’ve heard of it...

Something's been lost in translation there, but it's close.

Under the changes outlined in this document released on the eve of last season, the winner of a playoff (the format for which was never finalised) between regional winter league champions was set to be promoted into the national league for its 2021-22 season, replacing a team relegated at the end of the 2020-21 national league season, based on average performances over the last 3 or 4 seasons and with certain requirements in place to ensure regional representation. So not quite an Auckland-specific thing as it suggests there.

This was all scrapped when Covid-19 hit in March and has now been replaced with a proposal that is effectively a return to the Superclub format of 1993-1995, as outlined here.

I didn't mind the commentary too much for the WelClasico. Sure it wasn't Piney but I can live with that. It was the camera work that was appalling. First 20 minutes it kept zooming in and out, right to left and it gave me a headache. Then it settled somewhat but you missed a lot of the action on the wings as players on the near side were out of shot while on the far side you needed binoculars to see clearly.
This is a good start but the planning and execution need to be improved or else very little benefit to the league will be generated.

Yeah, some of the camera work at the games has been appalling. TW vs Nix would've looked disappointing if it were a primary school project. I got the impression that whoever was filming it a) had never seen a football game and b) had left their tripod at home.

Have any of you guys watched the Women's football? The Canterbury game last week had a good camera setup and two fairly decent commentators. The Futsal comp last week in Hamilton had a decent commentator as well.

I'd like to thank Fred de Jong for his comentary today in the AFC v Eastern Suburbs game. Having only had 3 hours sleep as I am on nightshift, Fred managed to help put me to sleep after about 20 minutes. Top man, your bland waffle did the trick.

Auckland City chairman opposes plan to overhaul national football competition

Was there anything specific people disliked about Superclub? 

Though I don't think it is a direct comparison, as I think we played some meaningless Plate round whilst the national one took place - which would have had advantages in knowing the length of the season.

His arguments seem a bit nonsensical. I haven't made my mind up on this proposal but:

> Chairman Ivan Vuksich said his preference was to continue with the current summer national league format but with the addition of promotion-relegation to provide a pathway for the more ambitious winter clubs.

How is that supposed to work? Auckland City has one bad year and falls down to NRFL? Then what, share the players with Central? Or is the plan to protect Auckland City from relegation?

When an "ambitious" winter club promotes do they no longer play football in winter? Do they only play summer? What do the players do over winter? Go to other clubs? Sit out?

Sounds like he just re-pitched the superclubs idea in a different way.

Man in charge of team that's done the best out of the current system sees no problem with current system. 

The general standard of play got worse as the top players spread around more clubs and there were a lot more meaningless games (not just the plate round) 

The benefits of the super club were for the smaller places like Wanganui, Napier and Hamilton (superclub was when a Waikato team has been most successful in the National League)

I am more thinking Ivan Vuksich is going hard against it as the hierarchy at Kiwitea Street does not want to chose between one entity or the other be it ACFC or Central United. 

I am 100% sure if the plan is carried through Central will be absorbed by ACFC which would be a bit sad ditching 58 years of history but c'est la vie. 

I'll let you know in a week I'm reading this at the moment: https://nationalleaguedebates.weebly.com/

This is the key concern for me. Best players spread around more clubs, and clubs throwing money at players in an attempt to get to the 'national' stage of the competition. That in turn will just inflate player prices, so even average players who have no business being in the national league will have silly money thrown at them.

The end result could easily be worse standard of play but no reduction in costs (and possibly an increase for quite a few clubs).

talk through why you see that as being a bad thing

The quality won't be concentrated. If you have 100 top players in the country capable of playing in a national league, theoretically you should get a better standard of competition if you fit them in 8 teams rather than 15 or 20. And opening it up to that many clubs just means that more donkey ends up playing the national league and getting paid for it.

The flipside is that under the current arrangement the best players aren't evenly spread across the 8 teams, so it just ends up being a race between ACFC and TeeDubs, with ES coming in to join it over the last 2-3 years. But the overall standard of the national league has notably lifted over the last 4-5 years, and I can see it crashing down in no time under a superclub-type model.

what do you want out of the league? 

Watching strong teams play? Fiscal sustainability? Development opportunities for players and coaches? Experienced players guiding players with potential? Locals playing?

currently there is eight teams of mediocre quality (HB on weekend), not geographically spread (any more), full of imports (covid has helped), big wages, poor crowds, big egos, minimal football community buy-in.

Feasibly you could get a higher standard in the National Payoffs than the current National League. The best in-form teams in the country - rather than those obliged to fill a slot in a league - something two teams couldn't even do this year.

ps Donkeys get paid to play already, and clubs chase winning third tier comps with $

From my side, I want the national league to serve as a genuine stepping stone to professional football (and I think that Handy Prem is heading that way, there's been a few players make that transition already) - so player development is the number 1 goal for me. I accept that it may not be for a lot of others. This means that best players in the country have to play against each other, which is I why I think you need to concentrate that in a smaller number of teams. How you do that so that they're evenly spread across all the teams, I don't know. I think the best players will naturally gravitate towards Auckland and Wellington for a whole range of reasons, I don't think that can be stopped regardless of the model.