Capital 5....whats the goss ?

Wests and Miramar (I think ) are the additions this season possibly bringing up the average age of the league to about 40 !!!!

Dont let the bi-focals and zimmer frames fool ya tho....many a younger team put to shame by these two...

So who are gonna be the leading lights this season....anyone ???

Not much goss - at least I haven't heard any.

Quite happy Stokes Valley have been promoted - that can only be good for the league.

Look forward to playing Miramar & Wests - sure there will be some quality players in those teams.

Petone were quality too last year.

When will the draw come out do you think?

 Think it will be next week.  They are finalising stuff from Thursday.

Petone were a good side however the mighty EAFC stumped them twice.

Did both Brooklyn teams go down, does this mean no more Happy Valley???

Look out for the sleek new look Eastbourne who having thrown our Tangerine strip away will now be pretending to be South Africa.

Can't wait to play Wests and Miramar it will be good fun and I'm sure wind will be a factor playing away to Miramar.

 No such luck on Happy Valley.  A couple of teams have pulled out so teams have pushed up a grade.

Last Cap 5 line-up I spotted had Upper Hutt ansd Tawa up to four and two Brooklyn sides back in.

your club would have received an email last night

"Huge sigh of dissapointment" Would have been nice to play other new teams.

Wests team has lost a few players..apparently! Well..Dom coaching the 2nds

I played about just over half a season in Cap 5 last season, biggest waste of time ever. Every week there were either fights, terrible challenges being put in, blatant cheating due to no registered refs. Stopped playing after wellington united cheated their way back from 2-0 down to win 3-2 after an offside goal that never crossed the line and a 100th min penalty for a dive lol

^ I mostly agree with you there AJ.

Having played in Cap 1/Cap 2 for most of my career I found the leap down a considerable one last year.

Lots of angst, fights, dirty challenges etc. It didn't help that our season (Eastbourne) never really took off.

We were lucky enough to have refs for most games - but their skill level reflected that of the league - no offence to anyone involved.

And when teams provided their own refs there were a myriad of dodgy calls - well, let's say it - a lot of cheating going on.

However, I'm of the opinion that if we want change, we need to start with ourselves, and our team first. 

Have a chat to your team mates and tell them what you're expectations are. No leg-breaking tackles, no cheating, let's have fun.

Hang on a minute I duly remember watching a game at Naenae last year and watching you go through the back of a Naenae player? hahaha

Nah I went through the front of him actually. And that was after said player had elbowed my team mate in the face twice in two minutes.

And the same game we lost after our LB was clearly taken down in the box in the dying minutes and the ref they had provided didn't call the pen and they scored on our left side (whilst our LB was still down clutching his ankle).

Quite a disgraceful game, that.

As I remember it, he went through the front of you with both hands around your neck and you got penalised for it. HAHA. I also don't think EAFC will ever forget the penalty moment, mind you season before our keeper (who is huge and was airbourne) was hit in the chest with sprigs by a flying kick while holding the ball.

Ahh, Cap 5, never a dull moment.

P.S bro I like the most of my career comment, earlier, especially seeing as it was like 2 seasons.

More like 6 bro - but I don't expect you to be able to count (after seeing how badly you can spell). You count like you shoot....inaccurately!

STHJEFF don't worry mate - we're a very good bunch of guys - that Naenae game was probably the only fight we had all season. We were guilty of retaliating but it's fair to say those lads brought the worst out of us by tackling late all game, elbowing and most importantly cheating.

All good. I know how that sort of thing can happen. I have tried to get a ref for the match but not too hopeful so may end up doing a half each.

Our first game against Petone was lolfull. They were awarded 3 second half penalties and we copped a straight red for something trivial. I grabbed a dudes shirt later on in the game, he turned around and head butted me in the face in front of the ref. Ref didnt do anything. Some advisor from CF was watching the game next to ours and caught a few of the heated moments, came up to us afterwards and apologised on behalf, also rescinded the red card on the spot too pretty much.

Even some of the really good games played by both us and our opposition were full of mouthing off, elbows, late tackles etc... Im pretty sure the only game i remember without any drama was against Eastbourne in round 2.

Played two games for Uni, one against BNU and one against Eastbourne and there were no issues in those games.

Brand new look Uni Accies squad this year. Only 3 remaining players as most have moved on/up to the 1/2/3rd teams.
Due to competitive trials, the team is definitely more youthful and with talent to boot.

First game against a potentially tricky Wests will be a good season opener for us I think.

In regards to the dirty fouls, mouthy calls & shoddy refs: welcome to lower league football lads! Is the norm in my experience.

Good luck! Although, I do know the wests team has had a few changes. Some of the older guys have left so will have a new look

 Eastbourne 3 - 5 Marist

One of them games I guess. No ref, so the we had to provide one and he didn't do a fantastic job to be fair.

Regardless, we probably didn't deserve to win for the simple reason that every time we scored we sould just sit on our ass and let them go a goal up again (this happened every time we scored actually).

Marist scored a cracker from outside the box although our defending was pretty slack there.

A pretty tight game that could have pgone either way had we defended a bit better.

BNU Reserves 12-1 Naenae

^^^^ wow. Brooklyn were strong or Naenae were weak? Or both?

 Holy Shmeltzy that's an interesting score line!
Any reports on the game?

Im taking a season off from football this year so i havent been back training with them, but word is its a new look squad with some good talent this season. The third team are still the same team.

Hey gents. Looks like round 1 was a goalfest. My Brooklyn Palace side got dicked 8-0 by rangers. They were strong, fit and well organised. We were....well less than that, missing a few important players though. Our reserves demolished naenae, who I'm now looking forward to playing. Should be an interesting season...

BTW have a look at www.teamisto.com. A few of the Cap 5 sides are using it (Karori, Brooklyn). Would be good to see the whole division on there.

I'll be checking out Wests and Eastbourne this week, just down the road from me. Will be an interesting fixture. And the pitch is immaculate, still the best natural pitch in all of Capital football.

I played for Wests Vs Uni last week. Man those young Uni guys can run! Wests have a few players out this week so could be interesting

Man Eastbourne will be kicking themselves after that, with Wests so wasteful in front of goal it was a golden chance gone a miss. That 2nd Wests goal was a beaut. Eastbourne looked only a shadow of the side I remember playing against last season. Will assume both sides were missing a few key players ...

 And nice to see Mehmet still searching for that 30yard wonder strike lol 

So from a neutral perspective, who do you think should have won? I just received the match summary (drunken writing!) and it did seem like Eastbourne were pretty unlucky 

To respond to the two previous posts,

yes we were missing at least 3 key players (2 of which are by far the best player in the team) - but from what I hear, Wests were missing a few players too.

And no, I don't think we were pretty unlucky - we just didn't play well enough to get anything out of that game.

Sure, we could have scored one more in the 2nd half to snatch a point, but we didn't. 

Especially in the first half they were running rings around us, we sometimes looked like school boys and weren't able to gain any meaningful possession. Their first goal was a fluke though, 2min into the game, with our keeper mistakenly positioning himself on the 6 yard box thinking it was the goal line and letting the ball into the net without realizing. They deserved at least another goal or two during the first half though.

In the 2nd half we played better than they did, but they scored a cracker after about 5' which killed us. Still, we mounted a half decent comeback and scored one with about 25' to go. 

Then it all got very confusing. Quite a few late challenges on both sides - ref did OK (heard from Pedro it was his first game in charge), but could have kept more control over the game - and lots of long ball/counter attacks, where we didn't manage to find the equalizer. It was probably a nice 2nd half to watch for the neutrals (and to play in for us on the field).

To be fair if the game had ended 4-2 or 4-3 to Wests it would have been a better reflection of what had gone on in the 90'. 

From our perspective I guess, missing 3 very good players and having 3 debutants (including a 17 year old), we can't really complain and need to bring all the positives from the last two games into the clash vs Karori this weeks.

Does anyone know much about them?

Was waiting for the ref to come up lol seemed like both sides had a bit to say to him, as a neutral though i thought he actually did really well. He was strict when he needed to be ie. players mouthing off, but didnt lose his cool by throwing around cards. He let the game flow on pretty well. There were some late-ish challenges but i didnt see anything serious that was ever putting player safety at risk in my opinion.

I thought Wests were the better side. They just seemed stronger all round and more imposing up front. Theyre away to BNU 2nds this week so that will no doubt be a good game especially with the good form BNU are carrying into the fixture.

No discussion this week...

The two early leaders, Brooklyn and Miramar, both lost.  Playing for Wests I know what happened to Brooklyn, but what happened in the Miramar games as from all accounts they are a very strong team?

Last saturday Eastbourne beat Karori 3-2. We were 2-0 down after 30' and weren't in the game. Karori are a very tall team with lots of flair in the midfield. They especially had two tall strikers who won absolutely everything in the air and it took a lot of work for us to pull one back before the half time. In the second half we started playing from the back a lot more and put them under a lot of pressure. They still threatened us in the air and by counter-attacking and our keeper did very well in 2-3 occasions.

We equalized with about 20' to go and then got the winner in the last 5'. The pitch was in good nick but I found it quite sticky with all that rain, so the last 5' we literally parked the bus. They almost scored and our striker saved one on the line..

A draw would have been a fair result, but we'll take the win, because we worked very hard and kept going despite being behind for a large part of the game. Looks like a very interesting league..we're away at BNU this week. Playing on Happy Valley will no doubt prove a challenge for both teams with that damn cricket pitch in the middle of the field!

Watched Wests vs Marist, pretty ordinary especially with the rolling subs, seemed the home side couldnt find any fluidity and were again pretty wasteful with their chances up front. Missed a penalty, but probably shouldnt have been awarded in the first place (defender made a howler of a clearance scuffing it up onto his hand, wasnt intentional - you'd otherwise be awarding pens every week in cap 5).

Marist didnt even really seem to threaten up front at all, Wests keeper had a pretty easy game. They had one real good chance just after the penalty. 2v1 with the keeper, Marist striker shouldve laid it off but instead went on his own, tackled by the advancing keeper, ball fell nicely to the other striker who made an absolute meal of the finish into what was an open goal, all he had to do was put his foot through it but it dribbled across the turf giving a back tracking Wests defender enough time to slide in and block it.

I will say again Wests were the better side and probably shouldve won by a bit more, theyre going to have to start firing to beat the other top of the table sides though.

Fair assessment. Our finishing was pretty poor today and we lacked fluidity. We did have a couple of key players out today, although this just seems to be the nature of our team. Hopefully at some stage during the season we'll have everyone there and be able to put together a complete performance.

We'll take the clean sheet though! First one in over a season!