Teams seem devoid of character. Even ACFC games are snooze fests.
Think it's because the quality def has diminished a lot this season. Not too sure but here's my thinking:
- North Shore have lost *all* of their squad from last year to Bay Olympic + Div 1 and 2 clubs with money - that's one less competitive team.
- Waiheke playing fill-ins; basically young reserves players from other clubs keen to try their luck in the Northern League. Allowing them to field their promotion-winning squad is a contentious issue but you can't lie, the league would be significantly more entertaining with Waiheke at their full capabilities
- Takapuna decent, but playing some *terrible* football - they replace WCR who did try to be attractive
- Suburbs are significantly worse than last season. Team's great for developmental purposes but certainly isn't competitive this season
- An unreal lack of media coverage. It's been butchered compared to last season, where it wasn't particularly good to begin with. Feels like a social league
I’ve only watched Div 1 this year, but I feel that North Shore, Waiheke and I guess Suburbs too are worse than the bottom three last year of WCR, Northern and Manukau. WCR are topping Div 1, but tbf Northern aren’t doing great, but that’s because they aren’t great, and have been bailed out of some heavy score lines in recent weeks. But having ES, Shore and Waiheke on 5, 4 and 3 points after 10 games, with goal differences getting close to -30 is pretty poor, especially for Suburbs.
Having Tribe give notifications of scores on full-time and having lineups an hour before kickoff is better than it’s been before, which was nothing. Plus you add in the live-streamed games by NZF. That being said, the only way to see any other footage is from the ‘Goals of the Week’ segment they do. Every game has to be filmed, so surely they can do a full goals round-up at the very least. I’ve wanted for years an equivalent of the ‘Grassroots rugby’ show, but I know that’ll never happen.