Northern Leagues

How does it work if the season is only 14 games? They write it up as a National League *Ba-doom-tish*

ha ha! i think that 14 games is definitely using the term 'league' liberally.  'series' would be more appropriate

Hello there. Sorry I am a late arrival to this discussion.... I only pop in every now and then these days.

I favour a 12-team northern premier league because in my view that is the bare minimum for critical mass. 

Jeff, I enjoy your posts, and regularly find myself nodding at the manner in which you substantiate what initially appear as pretty blunt propositions here.

But I disagree on this occasion. As for questions of standard - the standard is the standard in any given year.  A quick glance at the historical tables shows no discernable pattern of a cause and effect relationship between league size and "standards" in terms of outcome, whether is it a 10-team, 12-team, or 14-team league.

Every year one team will finish bottom no matter what the standard. And another will finish second to bottom. There are a whole raft of subjective factors at play which will determine whether clubs are weak or strong in any given year, regardless of whether the competiton is 8, 10, 12, or 14 teams. And any team, by being exposed to a general league standard, will in turn have its own standards influenced.

In 2009 the premier league was reduced to a 10-team competition, from its historic 12 teams.  For 2009 we then had a rugby league-style playoffs competition tagged onto the end of the season.

That novelty was then, in turn, dropped in 2010.

When the league was reduced the reason cited was not "standards" but the fixture backlog at the end of the season with premier teams invariably involved at the latter stages of the Chatham Cup.

What is a frustration to me as an administrator of a Waikato-based club is that we effectively have no direct say in the shape and structure of a league we have been part of for over 30 years.

The league is run by AFF (at present). In the old days there used to be the northern provincial council. So at the moment we can't even vote people in or out, if we want to effect change. (The northern league is important to my club, and indeed to Waikato football, but funnily enough doesn't even exist, in terms of NZ Football's strategic plan.)

I believe we should have an annual meeting of all northern league chairmen to consider matters of common interest - including structures - and have a cross pollination of ideas on what we - as fee paying clubs - actually want.

I agree that it is absurd that 20 per cent of entrants get relegated at the end of the season — which are short by any standard anyway.

The bottom line is we need more answerability to constituent clubs. 

Incidentally my club beat two premier league teams during the season - and we were not good enough to finish in the top two in the first division. Though in saying that, I accept that overall there is a general step up between premier and Div 1.

Finally it is an absurdity that we should have a 10-team winter premier league and an 8-team summer league and so often find ourselves with fixture overlaps. We do need the family of football to be more in harmony.

Fair points Bruce

Fury beat Papakura 1-0 in the first leg of the NRFL entry playoff on Saturday (at Fury's ground). Anyone see the game?

Still fairly open for the 2nd leg at Kura this Saturday, although with no away goal for Kura the job has got a lot tougher.

I'll probably head down to watch the match, looking forward to seeing what the calibre of the team coming up is like.

interesting topic at the moment on the NRFL forum - in regards to the Fury vs Kura playoff game.

It appears the coach/chairman/sugar daddy of Fury just registers all his imports as new players (and dosn't do the international transfer) so technically they are classified as non-guest players.

Are WaiBOP just letting him do this or is there a genuine loophole here?

Does this have any roll-on effects for teams who then sign a player from Fury?

Hello. I have no view on Fury, but as an adjunct to this... has anybody ever seen a copy of the written decision on the Wairarapa Chatham Cup appeal related to guest players? .. from memory a non NZ citizen lost his non-guest player status when he travelled overseas for a couple of weeks - even though he never transferred away from the club

I requested a copy of the decision many months ago - and never heard back

But at the time I attended a federation meeting where there was significant concern at the potential ramifications for loads of low level clubs of NZF's "new" interpretation of guest player rules. 

No idea on the guest player stuff.

Heading to the game this arvo, no doubt AFF will be live tweeting but I'll tweet as well so if you want updates tune into @bozman19

So Fury won....

Yes. Relatively easily in the end. Too good through the middle of the park and the 2 big centre backs won pretty much everything in the air when Kura tried the long ball.

Alot of rumours about Fury for next season - supposedly they will now be based out of Hamilton not Tauranga, plus half of the squad will be based in Auckland as some players don't want to travel. Those are the rumours I'm hearing, but it all sounds very Mickey Mouse. They do appear to be backed well financially though, so time will tell.

It only took them 18 months......

Bring back John Davidson

i doubt it will be JD - look for a big name coach here i reckon.

Only reason why JD got out was because of Fallon

Go for player/coach why not?

Ha ha. Such modesty. Thought you orangies from Wntn Utd were all hard nuts.

seriously though if you do want to come down and have a look and meet the guys we are having a little training/get together for the 2014 season on the 16th of November from 4pm to 6pm - your more than welcome to come down and have a look.

November ffs.

Even amateur footballers in New Zealand get no breaks these days.

contary to your statement we will have just the one formal training in Nov and we won't start our program until Jan (as we have done in the past), however with the turf we will tell players if they want to come down and work on stuff during November and December they can.

Also best look at your own club first Sydney - Birko havn't even stopped yet and I hear they are probably going to train through....

Was kind of a general statement tbf. Don't agree with it anywhere my club or not.

fair enough - I don't believe in it either but if you have a facility and players want to just keep in touch over summer (with no scheduled training or pressure) i think that's ok.

Yeah fair enough if it's pretty casual and laid back.

oh yeah there was one little issue when there was a really wet day in Auckland where the turf started bubbling in places - turns out the contractors hadn't put filters in the drains on the outside of the pitch so all the leaves and mud etc blocked the external drains and the water had nowhere to go but on the pitch - since then we have had no major issues.

We did have the Waitakere Cup game called off due to rain but it pissed down so hard that day that i don't think any pitch would have survived it...

Look forward to seeing you there!

http://www.aucklandfootball.org.nz/index.php?id=44&tx_ttnews[tt_news]=2322&tx_ttnews[backPid]=1&cHash=fb0c97f9f1

interesting move...

Bet you'll see loads of this in years to come. People trying to be the next Emblen.

Fencibles are a big club lot bigger than sports. So good move for him.....

And a lot less bullshit too

Ygot some good young players also at fencibles and with roger there should do well

I was not there but I heard that after a game at Sports, upstairs, Porter threatened to punch out the ref for something that happened weeks prior or something like that. Apparently, everyone just stood and watched in silence and BT had to get involved. BT told the club where to go and resigned on the back of this.

Sounds like a total wanker tbh.