Auckland FC Women (beg, borrow or steal)

No, it was that the midfield weren't able to contain the Chelsea players, and the outside backs couldn't stop them from getting down the outside. Outclassed.

Glorious. 

I was very surprised to see Chance start. I do think she’s a fantastic player, but she hasn’t played in what over a year since having her baby? Wasn’t fair by the coaches to start her. She had very heavy legs most of that half, I would have started Jensen. Overall outclassed - but to be expected largely given who they were playing.

That might be harder than they’d like - a Chelsea supporter back home reading the club’s match report would have no clue they weren’t playing a regular team.

Part of me thinks AFC overplayed their hand by slapping their brand all over this event to hide their lack of a women’s first team, but I guess they calculated correctly that would bring in more attendance than something more neutral. It’s not like thousands of Nix supporters would’ve flown up if the game had been branded differently, and they couldn’t call it a New Zealand Invitational side without NZF jumping on them.

So grudging credit to Bindon and co for bringing a top club to little ol’ NZ and getting a 15k crowd to a women’s game for the first time since 2023, even if Chelsea would like to imply that was 15k of their own supporters.

I mean, when we say "bring in attendance", they were literally giving away complimentary tickets in the last couple of days

(I wasn't there, kids had a party to go to and I was checking out the other, better attraction in Mt Eden that day)

What a trainspotter 

Direct train from the western suburbs to Mt Smart after September 13!

As if there weren’t enough riff-raff at AFC games already :)

Seriously though, for all I gather the Port didn’t make their presence felt yesterday because “it wasn’t a real AFC game” I hope the city will get behind its ALW team when they do finally start playing.

There’s been plenty of uncool moves around the women’s game in Australia recently. 

The Port do struggle not to be uncool reflexively I guess. Feel like they’re much improved: a season without stopping a bus, publicly shading the national team or putting an opposition fan in hospital. Put another day on the sign Homer! 

Most of the men’s clubs have been struggling along and a good number of them have had support from all over the place. 

Then all of a sudden the women’s game has to break even to be allowed? 

I’m really proud of our Wahinix. They’ve been a good watch and shown several outstanding young kiwi talents. On top of that we’ve had Bev and Samba too. 

Illustrates the gap between the leagues, the need for full time pros and so on. The England women’s team has won a bunch of trophies right? 

But the best thing about the trains is the easy trip to games! And overseas a little preloading…