Wellington Olympic Are Charity Cup Champs and the 2024 Domestic Footy Season Has Begun
Every year the local footy swings back around way before anybody’s ready for it. 2024 has been no different, with the first competitive game of the new campaign pitting National League champions Wellington Olympic against Chatham Cup champions Christchurch United in the freshly revived Charity Cup. Not a game of any major consequence, but it’s a symbolic starter’s gun... made especially fascinating because of the two specific teams involved.
Christchurch United had a dominant 2023 as they cruised to another Southern League title and claimed their first Chatham Cup since 1991. A third-placed finish in the National League was pretty handy too, although did show that a distance still remained between them and the established top dogs of Auckland City and Wellington Olympic.
And that was before they lost coaching team Paul Ifill and Ekow Quainoo, as well as a huge contingent of their top players (coincidentally, it was Wellington Olympic who hired the coaches away). Only two players started this Charity Cup game who also started the Chatham Cup final that qualified them for it roughly six months earlier. Those two players were Riley Grover and Joel Peterson, a couple of local youngsters... albeit very good local youngsters. Both have been in the first team set-up for multiple years now.
What happened to everyone else? Well, Ifill and Quainoo only seem to have taken one player with them and that’s Eddie Wilkinson. However imports Dan MacLennan, Eoghan Stokes, and Aaron O’Driscoll have all crossed the Tasman to join Australian NPL clubs; Matt Tod-Smith has crossed the city to sign with Cashmere Technical, along with defender Sam Lapslie; Sam Philip and Haris Zeb have both moved north and signed with Auckland club Birkenhead United; and most notably their impressive goalkeeper Scott Morris has signed with Stoke City over in the English Championship. That still leaves Jago Godden from the Chatham Cup final but maybe he was injured or something.
Don’t think that these fellas have been living at the airport, waving a tear-stained handkerchief from the departure lounge though. Christchurch United worked quickly after losing Ifill & Quanioo to bring in Ryan Edwards as the new manager. He’d had great success in getting Petone FC into the National League despite a very young and largely self-developed squad, that Petone side struggled for results against the best teams in the country but they played some very tidy and encouraging footy along the way. Edwards was no doubt hired with that youth focus in mind considering how much emphasis CUFC put on their own academy. Plus it also helps that he was able to bring along last year’s Central League golden boot Matt Brazier along with him... and that United won the sweepstakes to sign Joel Stevens after he moved to Christchurch for personal reasons. Stevens thus leaves Wellington Olympic with a National League winners’ medal that he was influential in them earning – and his first game for his new club was against his old club.
The CUFC import contingent has been restocked with German fullback Michael Hornsby joining after some time in America, plus Dutch goalkeeper Steven van Dijk (and Transfermarkt suggests there may be a couple more where those lads came from). You might also want to count defender Kaleb de Groot-Green who is a Samoan international, he’s linked up from Dunedin City Royals. On top of that they’ve scooped up Napier City Rovers defensive midfielder Ta Eh Doe and kiwi winger David Yoo, who has spent the last five years bouncing around the lower leagues in Portugal – one of the undercover foreign kiwi pros. He initially came through the Eastern Suburbs junior system.
Chuck that all together and the Rams lined up for the Charity Cup in a 4-1-4-1 formation with Van Dijk in goal, Peterson at right-back and Hornsby at left-back, Grover and KDGG in central defence, Doe at CDM, Eric Sugahara and Daniel Meyn in front of him. Yoo wide on the right, Stevens wide on the left. Brazier up top. Their bench was littered with their own academy blokes, including Jackson Cole who, along with Sugahara, was part of the qualifying squad for the last U17 World Cup (though neither made the final squad for the U17WC itself).
These are some funky change-ups for a club that’s seeking to establish a South Island dynasty. They’re going to have to get used to big player turnover from year to year if their academy reaches the levels they’re aiming for but having to create a whole new attack from almost scratch, with a new coach, is kind of above and beyond. Especially when a couple of their key veterans have apparently moved across town to Cashmere Technical (where Ben Lapslie’s brother Sam already plays). Matt Tod-Smith was their captain last season. Scored the winning penalty in the Chatham Cup shootout. Feels like the Southern League might have just recalibrated itself... granted, Stevens, Yoo, and Brazier aren’t exactly chumps. All three could score in double-figures this year, and the increasing presence of Christchurch United players in national youth set-ups tells you there’s no shortage of talent in the junior ranks.
Whereas Christchurch United are having to reshape their first team, up north of the Cook Strait it seems like Paul Ifill’s Director of Football gig at Wellington Olympic is more about ensuring that Olympic can keep things moving steadily along. What do you do after you win one National League? You try and win another, of course. And maybe a Chatham Cup to go with it.
The Greeks have lost some key players. Joel Stevens to Christchurch United for one, while Gianni Bouzoukis has joined NWS Spirit in the Aussie leagues – granted, he could potentially pop back up for the National League phase as those NPL folks often do. English defender Jack Cawley has also departed for Australia while Nati Hailemariam has moved across to Petone. But the core of their championship side remains, bolstered out by a bunch of ex-Wellington Phoenix Academy folks.
Adam Supyk was on the books for Eastern Suburbs last year but spent most of that time in the UK working on the trial circuit. He’s joined Olympic. As has Nix U20s graduate Kaelin Nguyen, who played for the Phoenix first team during their most recent Aussie Cup run. In fact he set up the winning goal for Joshua Rudland in the first round game against Peninsula Power... Rudland is also joining Olympic (though he didn’t play the Charity Cup), listed amongst their squad list in the Match Programme. Jonty Roubos played for Olympic two years ago and is back after a stint with Miramar Rangers. He used to be a Nix Academy fella too. And Luke Tongue is not only an ex-WeeNix player but he’s a current WeeNix coach within the youth grades, hence the move back to Wellington where he’s also linking up with this lot as a player.
Tongue featured off the bench in the Charity Cup. As did new Irish import striker Joel Coustrain. No sign of Eddie Wilkinson against his old team but word is that he’s followed Ifill/Quainoo. A Joel Stevens for Eddie Wilkinson swap deal is about as equitable as it’s going to get. Oh and they’ve also scooped up Oli Colloty after a spell with Auckland City, and it appears that Jesse Randall is back, although that’s potentially only for the first few months as he eyes a gig with the Auckland A-League side. Gabriele Matanisiga is another funky addition – a 28 year old Fijian international defender, signed after a brief trial period.
That Auckland ALM team has the potential to seriously shake up the domestic scene, especially if they begin by scooping up a few Auckland City players. Plenty of them who’d fit the bill. The Navy Blues remain the team to beat every year, even if Wellington Olympic can now claim to have found something close to parity with them. ACFC have already lost a few key defenders over the past couple years (Kaltack, Brotherton, Mitchell) and if they lose, for example, one or two of their star midfielders then they’d have a hell of a job replacing them.
We’ll see what that lot looks like as soon as next week because that’s when the Oceania Champions League qualifiers take place. Auckland City vs Wellington Olympic. Two legs, one home and one away. Last year those two teams served up a fantastic 180 minutes of football with Auckland City advancing thanks to an Emiliano Tade-inspired late comeback.
Not sure why the need for qualifiers. It seems like Wellington Olympic winning the National League final should have been their qualification, but then we know what Oceania Football are like. We just got through a Women’s Olympic qualifying tournament which ended right as the international window began for some reason. And FIFA aren’t much better because their move to a four-year Club World Cup cycle means that the best performing team over that four-year period gets Oceania’s lone spot... which is already guaranteed to be Auckland City no matter what Wellington Olympic (or any of the other clubs) get up to in this edition.
Granted, there is also going to be an annual Intercontinental Cup each December that’s a similar format to the old CWC, except with only the six continental champs. So that’s what they’re competing for. The OFC winner will face wither the Asian or African winner, depending on how the draw goes. Winner of that game faces whichever of those AFC/CAF clubs didn’t play the first round, then the winner of that plays the winner of North/Central America vs South America. The European champions await in the final. Five games overall, nice and quick.
We can hit pause on the Auckland City stuff until a later date. Let us at least see who shows up on a teamsheet before indulging in the speculation. We do know for sure that Emiliano Tade (and Aidan Carey) have left for Western Springs... but while Tade’s a huge name, he’s also 35 years old and mostly only played the last 15-20 minutes of matches last year. Obviously Colloty’s left too, though he was never a key figure. They’ve picked up former England youth international Joe Ridley to bolster the frontline and maybe this year the two Vanuatu lads they signed (Jordy Tasip and Timothy Boulet) might find more of a spotlight. But yeah, let’s let that one simmer for now.
Wellington Olympic also rolled with what looked like a 4-1-4-1 formation. That’s particularly funky for Olympic because they’ve become renowned for operating with a back three with very high wingers so that’s a change under Ifill/Quainoo that could take some getting used to. However most of the spine of that championship side remained. Scott Basalaj in goal. A back four, from right to left, of: Tam Dimairo, Justin Gulley, Ben Mata, and Supyk. Tor Davenport-Petersen holding in midfield. Gavin Hoy and Hamish Watson in front of him with Nguyen and Jack-Henry Sinclair out wide. Oli Colloty up topskees. From across the great divide of the offseason, the Greeks still had six of their National League final first XI also start this match, with a seventh (Kailan Gould) coming off the bench. Two of the other starters here were subs in that match.
This Charity Cup game exists mostly to set the scene for the domestic season, so that’s what this article has done. The shifting sands are unavoidable, which is probably a good thing for competitive balance across the three regions. The fact that Auckland City looked unusually wobbly last National League and are entering 2024 with more question marks than they’re used to. The fact that Wellington Olympic and Christchurch United both have new coaches, have had to replace their top scorers amongst other key figures from their successes in 2023 (United more than Olympic, to be fair). These things ought to keep any of them from lapping the field.
Plenty of teams from outside last year’s NL qualifiers seem to be loading up with that target in mind too, while the potential of the Auckland ALM side to hoard up some of the best domestic players could have a huge impact by the time the next National League phase swings around. Which, by the way, is exactly what that club should be doing. Don’t go dragging All Whites away from settled professional spots. Sign free agents and domestic players. The Welly Nix have shown those blokes are good enough. Expand the professional player pool by giving opportunities to lads who don’t already have them, rather than shrinking it by dragging guys back home.
But with all that laid out... you probably want to know how the Charity Cup game actually went, right? Okey doke. This being the first game of the year and all, you can excuse a slower tempo. Nguyen did manage to find some good width on a few occasions, setting up a chance for Sinclair which was blocked, while Davenport-Petersen also tried his luck from range. CUFC had a couple of good instances where Yoo’s dribbling came to the forefront. However it always felt like a preseason affair and the changes at both clubs only added to that stuttering sense.
Yet there was nothing unfamiliar about seeing Ben Mata nod home a header from a corner kick on 33’. It was Supyk with the delivery, which Watson headed onwards to Hoy who headed onwards to Mata. Nicely done. Mata would later get outdone by his brother who logged two goals and two assists for Sligo Rovers over in Ireland a couple days later... though only Ben got lift a trophy. Funnily enough, the last time Ben Mata lifted a trophy (the MNL final on 26 September 2023), Max Mata had just that morning scored his first goal for Shrewsbury Town. Those Mata Bros need to learn how to share the spotlight with each other.
So that was 1-0 to Olympic at half-time, at which point the Rams threw on Jackson Cole in place of Yoo. That was one of the maximum ten subs made during this second half, with both teams recognising the preseason atmosphere. Yoo had been sharp, albeit with a tendency to chop infield too often, but they’d struggled to get Joel Stevens involved on the other wing. That trend would improve in the second half... alas, the Greeks also made a HT change with Kailan Gould on for Oli Colloty. That sent Watson into the number nine position where he promptly made it 2-0 by putting his noggin on the end of a Nguyen cross.
Around about the hour mark we saw Jonty Roubos and the Fijian international Gabriele Matanisiga replace Sinclair and Mata for WO. Then Rico Pradhan popped up at right back for CU. By now the substitutions were sucking the flow out of the contest, although Ta Eh Doe tried to inject some energy back into the match in non-recommended fashion by clattering into Hamish Watson with a sliding challenge. Several categories of weight difference between those two hombres. Watto is not the bloke to mess with. Doe got booked, then got subbed, as United would also deploy Zachary Bennett, Waisea Henry, and Thomas Chao. Lots of youth. There should be plenty of chances for lads like that to keep getting game time throughout the season – it’ll be fun to see who’s still contributing when the National League rolls around.
Meanwhile, Olympic also gave club debuts to Luke Tongue and Joel Coustrain and guess what? Those two combined for a third goal on 74’. Christchurch Utd hadn’t looked like they were going to find a way back but three goals make it safe regardless. The best chance for the visitors came after 84 mins when a Stevens corner kick was turned onto the post, Pradhan might have been the culprit, before Brazier saw a header (also from a Steven cross) brilliantly saved by Scott Basalaj.
That was more than Brazier could take because two minutes later he was sent off for an off-the-ball incident. This was bare minimum camera set up, they didn’t even pack the scaffolding, so we didn’t see exactly what happened – but it looked like Tongue had stepped across Brazier to block him off and MB must have retaliated because there were no arguments when the red flashed out of the ref’s pocket. If you watch it back you’ll see Justin Gulley give him a serve as he walks off, then Tam Dimairo pretends to drop a shoulder into him as he passes...
Bit of the old fake step. Brazier copped it honestly enough. Gotta laugh. Anyway, that was the end of the action. Wellington Olympic won it 3-0 and raised the trophy – the first time since the pandemic that the Charity Cup had even been competed for, although a few of those Welly Olympic lads will remember it fondly enough from the five consecutive years between 2014-2018 when it was Auckland City vs Team Wellington every single time. Then again in 2020, which was the last time it was staged (shout out to Eastern Suburbs for breaking up the trend in 2019).
Obliged to also mention that it’s called the Charity Cup for a reason... and as the home side, Wellington Olympic got to nominate the charity that’d benefit from whatever funds got raised. They chose Heart Kids NZ, who support children with heart conditions, as well as their families. Their annual fundraising campaign is coming up in a couple weeks in case anyone’s interested in doing something nice.
And with that we can officially consider the 2024 domestic season open. We are back. We are so back.
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