Football clubs enjoy format
Seeing the excitement around Southland club rugby and netball finals got sports reporter Scott Donaldson wondering if football should follow suit?
Recently, Old Boys clinched Southland’s premier Donald Gray league title in the seven team competition, with a comfortable 5-1 victory over fifth-placed Thistle in their last round-robin game, would it be more exciting to have a finals series?
The Southland club football coaches who responded when we asked them gave an emphatic response.
Club contacts from Old Boys, Queens Park, Southend United and Thistle don’t want finals introduced, all suggesting that whoever has the most competition points at the end of the season should win the title.
‘‘I’m not a fan of finals. You play all season to win the league rather than a one off match,’’ Queens Park coach Kevin Downey said.
‘‘I believe that a league is a fair gauge of who the best team is over an extended period, especially a league with only 6-7 teams in it,’’ Old Boys player/coach Jeremy Dix said.
‘‘Personally I like the current system where it’s top of the table wins, a season of hard work can be undone by one bad performance so it doesn’t truly reflect a season,’’ Thistle player/coach Richie Sutherland said.
‘‘I believe a league is won on merit over the playing season of ‘‘x’’ number of games and the winner rightly receives all the accolades, like the English Premier League,’’ Southend United coach Iain Walker said.
The coaches believe that the current season structure provides them with the opportunity to play enough playoff style games already.
Currently, the season starts with a pre-season tournament style competition featuring pool play and finals, followed by the Donald Gray Cup league, while the nationwide knockout style Chatham Cup and the post-season tournament style Charity Cup provide teams with the experience of playing more sudden death matches.
According to Southland Football development officer Luis Paiva, the Donald Gray competition has always been a league.
‘‘What happens with football and makes it different from other sports is that we have more than one competition in the same season,’’ Paiva said.
‘‘We always need a main league like Donald Gray, EPL, La Liga, we also have the cups like the Charity Cup which is usually the second important competition.’’
The Charity Cup continues on Saturday at the ILT Turf, with two exciting matches.
Gore Wanderers will be looking to secure their finals berth with a victory over Thistle at 1pm, while Southend United and Waihopai should have an entertaining game at 2:45pm.
Meanwhile, there should be a cracking game in the women’s Kolk Cup premier competition with the two top sides Queenstown and Queens Park who are tied on 12 competition points, playing on Sunday at 1pm on the turf.
In other football news, the Otago under-17 team featuring players from Southland will be looking to bounce back from four straight defeats in the Super Cup in Northern Ireland.
The Otago side tasted defeat against Londonderry 2-0 in their first playoff game for the salver up for grabs for teams finishing 17th to 22nd.