Waipā’s interest in football’s Southern Conference men’s league has evaporated.
If there was a roof at Cambridge Football Club’s home ground Josh Clarkin might have lifted it on Saturday. The 2023 Southern Conference gold boot winner equalised late in the first half of a Chatham Cup clash with New Zealand football giants Auckland City and was duly mobbed by teammates. The 2022 cup winners responded with three more goals to win 4-1 and progress to the final eight, and end Cambridge’s best run in the country’s longest oldest knockout competition.
The league – one step down from the Northern League which takes in Auckland clubs – last season saw Cambridge crowned champions and Te Awamutu finish bottom. It starts on March 29 with neither club involved.
Cambridge’s top team is now in the Northern League – and hosts Onehunga on March 22 – while Te Awamutu had been lined up for a drop down to a place in League One, won last year by neighbours Ōtorohanga.
But following withdrawals that league looks unlikely to go ahead – and Waikato and Bay of Plenty clubs will therefore step back down into their own regional leagues.
Clubs are waiting to see who goes where.
Ōtorohanga, which had hoped to move up into the Southern Conference was ruled out because it doesn’t have an Under-23 team – and it couldn’t continue in League One because it no longer has a qualified coach.
The restrictive rulings are not popular with Waikato club administrators who say they might work in Auckland, but do not achieve their goal of improving the game in smaller communities like Tokoroa and Ōtorohanga. In fact, as Ōtorohanga can testify, the opposite happens – it is not in contention to enter a new look top Waikato league.
In terms of rural clubs, Matamata Swifts, in the Conference this season are the exception.
The clubs in the top Waikato league will come from a pool of Cambridge, Te Awamutu, Claudelands Tokoroa, Wanderers, Unicol, Huntly, Melville, Northern and Morrinsville.
For the second weekend in a row a team from Cambridge Football Club won promotion to football’s Northern League – and boy did they celebrate. Six days after the men won promotion, the club’s women won a home and way play off against Onehunga Māngere 4-3 – having been held to a 3-3 draw at home in front of a large crowd on Sunday.
