Wanderers SC v

Wellington PhoenixSunday 25 January

Toll Stadium Whangarei

Kick off 1pm

#WSvWP

HI all and a slightly belated Happy New Year to all, let’s hope it’s a good successful year for Football!The FIFA U-20 World Cup is getting closer, and everyone is starting to look towards the final phase of our build up and the actual tournament.

Countries around the world are currently fighting for those last few coveted spots, with qualifying tourna-ments currently taking place in CONCACAF (North & Central America) where Mexico have already taken 1 of the 4 spots available. Also further South in CONMEBAL (South America) 10 teams are also fighting it out for another 4 spots, with hopefully teams like Brazil & Argentina gaining qualification to then grace our shores with their players and style of football in June.

The FIFA U-20 World cup Draw takes place on 10th February in Auckland, where we will find out who stands in our way of trying to make history of being the first U-20 NZ Men’s team to make it out of the group stage into the knockout phases, where anything can then happen! But with the support of a large home crowd, and in home conditions, it is a great opportunity for our players to make a mark on the world stage.Today’s Wanderers SC V Phoenix game is a great opportunity to play an ASB Premiership game for the first time here in Whangerei, at a FIFA U-20 World Cup venue, here at Toll stadium.

It is also a great opportunity for our football friends up here in Northland to see a good majority of poten-tial NZ players take the field with obviously our Wanderers U-20 extended squad, full of eligible U20 age group players, and the Phoenix with a young side mixed in with some experienced professionals. For the players it is an opportunity for U20 players to competitively play against someone who may be fighting for the same spot in the eventual NZ World Cup squad, and should lead to a good exciting game today. There are a lot of friends , International team mates and like I said players who have an opportunity to go ahead of someone else who is in the same position, with only 21 spots available for the final World Cup squad, it should be a good game.

It is great to see the Phoenix under the guidance of my friend and very experienced Coach Andy Hedge now involved in the ASB Premiership. They are our flagship professional club here in NZ and with the Phoenix

Welcome

first team doing so well in the A-League, this now gives them the same opportunities as their counterparts in Australia to give much needed game time their wider squad when needed, or help develop those young players that are the future of the game.

Our own Wanderers SC squad has grown so much over the past 2 seasons, the players are working tremen-dously hard every week in training, with us now in a full time training phase. They have committed to the programme and now we are starting to see both individual and team performances come through. Since the Christmas break we have played 2 games both inside QBE stadium, another U-20 World Cup venue, against historically the 2 ‘big guns’ of the ASB Premiership, Auckland City & Waitakere United, losing 1-0 to Auckland City in a very tight game, where it was widely felt that we deserved something from the game, then we delivered probably our best performance in the last 2 years, keeping our first clean sheet and beat-ing Waitakere United 2-0 in a deserved win.

There is still a lot to continue to work on and there are still things that we can do better and more consist-ently, but this result and previous scorelines now provide proof that these players are worthy of competing within this league. The experience that they will all take from this, no matter where we finish in the league or whether the eventually get selected in the U20 Squad or not, will help a large proportion of NZ Youth players take this experience of playing regularly in the ASB Premiership onto their next steps in Football wherever that may be. Hopefully we will see a lot of these players come through to play high levels of football both here in NZ and hopefully some offshore over the coming years and they can look back at the Wanderers SC experience as a good solid grounding in their football careers.

I hope you enjoy the game today, thanks to everyone for making it happen and bringing football up to this part of our country.

Darren BazeleyHead Coach Wanderers SC & Junior (U-20) All WhitesFootball Development Manager, Northern Football

Wanderers SC1 Zac Speedy (GK)2 Brock Messenger3 Deklan Wynne4 Te Atawhai Hudson-Wihongi5 Adam Mitchell6 Sam Brotherton7 Regont Murati8 Mario Ilich9 Angus Kilkolly10 Moses Dyer11 Finn Cochran12 Damian Hirst (GK)14 Andre De Jong15 Judd Baker16 Vincent Wiktora17 Ben Thomas18 Clayton Lewis19 Michael Den Heijer20 Noah Billingsley

Wellington Phoenix6 Joshua Brindell-South12 Tyler Boyd14 Alex Rufer15 Jason Hicks20 Lewis Italiano (GK)27 Louis Evans28 Xavier Pratt29 Joel Stevens30 Oliver Sail (GK)31 Andrew Blake32 Tamupiwa Dimairo33 James McGarry35 Sam Wilson36 Cherbel Khouchaba37 Nathaniel Hailemariam38 Justin Gulley39 Joe Bell40 Marcel Kampman (GK)41 Sam Gillespie42 Ruairi Cahill-Fleury43 Christian Johnson44 Liam Wood

Squad Lists

Head Coach Darren BazeleyAssistant Coach Neil EmblenGoalkeeper Coach Paul GothardPhysio Allan PearceSport Scientist Andy FoskettTeam Analyst Jase KimManager Rod Grove

Head Coach Andy HedgeTech Director Valerio Raccuglia

Strength & Conditioning Adam AllenPhysio Anand Kana

Football Ops Manager Shaun GillGK Coach Jonathan Gould

Asst GK Coach Chris Pile

Team P W D L F A GD Pts

Team Wellington 9 6 2 1 24 13 11 20Auckland City FC 8 6 0 2 15 9 6 18Wellington Phoenix 9 4 0 5 20 18 2 12Hawkes Bay United 9 3 3 3 17 19 -2 12Canterbury United 8 3 2 3 13 11 2 11Waitakere United 9 3 2 4 10 13 -3 11WaiBOP United 8 3 1 4 12 16 -4 10Wanderers SC 10 3 1 6 15 20 -5 10Southern United 8 2 1 5 10 17 -7 7

Game DetailsWanderers SC v Wellington Phoenix

1.00pm Sunday 25 JanuaryToll Stadium, Whangarei

Referee: Antony Riley

AR1: Glen Lochrie

AR2: Chris Wolken

Fourth Official: Cory Mills

A: Lion Foundation House, QBE Stadium, Stadium Drive, Albany, PO Box 300 537, Albany, North Shore City 0752 W: nff.org.nz

Get Involved in Football!

Keen to give football a go?We’ve got a number of football and Futsal

programmes running in Whangarei and the Far North for all ages and skill levels.

If you’re interested in playing football get in touch!

Dave Alabaster, Football Development Officer Northland Dave.Alabaster@nff.org.nzDan Johnston, Football Development Officer Far North, Dan.Johnston@nff.org.nz

Christina Taylor, Northland Administration Officer, Christina.Taylor@nff.org.nz

Photo 1 Roger Pearson Photo 2 Photomac Photo 3 Alida Shanks

For more information go to our website www.nff.org.nz

Game Days at Northland Events Centre, WhangareiSaturday 30 May Kick off 4pmTuesday 2 June Kick off 1pmSunday 7 June Kick off 2pmThursday 11 June – Round of 16 – Kick off 4pm

The Official Draw takes place 10 February – find out who is coming to Whangarei!

More information & tickets available at FIFA.com/nz2015

asb.co.nz ASB Bank Limited

Big goals, or small goals, they’re all successes to be celebrated. And because football is all about goals (and savings too of course) we’re very proud to support it at every level. New Zealand Football, Succeed on.

We love goals as much as you do.

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