I wrote back in March that for the 2021 season NZ Football has restructured the domestic competition into three regional winter leagues feeding into a summer "Champions League" competition. The previous summer format was a federation franchise system with no promotion and relegation, so this is the first time since 2003 that clubs have been able to access the full competition pyramid available to New Zealand.
With the conclusion of the Southern League today, the clubs joining the Wellington Phoenix Reserves in the National League were finalised as follows: Auckland City, Auckland United, Eastern Suburbs, Birkenhead United, Wellington Olympic, Miramar Rangers, Western Suburbs, Cashmere Technical and Selwyn United. As expected most of these clubs are regional powerhouses, but one stands out as a huge surprise.
To get a feel for the odds the "Stallions" aka Selwyn United has overcome to play in the National League, let's review their timeline as follows:
2013 Selwyn United is formed from a merger of Rolleston and Ellesmere Football Clubs to better provide for the large influx of players into the area following the Christchurch earthquakes.
2017 Selwyn United is promoted to the Football South Championship for the first time.
2018-2020 Football South Championship: Selwyn United comes second to last every year. They got as close as 3 points away from a last place finish and relegation.
2021 Football South Championship: the top 5 gain promotion to the new South Island Football Championship. Selwyn started the final day in sixth place, playing their fifth place rival Nomads United who had an advantage of 3 points and 1 goal difference. To qualify Selwyn needed to win by 2 goals - which they did with a goal in each half, and even saved a penalty in the last 10 minutes. See the final day report for more details.
2021 South Island Football Championship: the top 2 qualify for the National League. By the final weekend Cashmere Technical had already won the league and qualification, while Selwyn started Saturday in fourth place in a race with 4 other teams for the second place spot. Otago University were 2nd, but had played their final match on Thursday and could do nothing but watch events unfold. Coastal Spirit was 1 point behind Selwyn but was expected to overtake on Sunday, with their final game expected to be a romp against wooden spooners Green Island. Christchurch United had an advantage over Selwyn of 1 point and 5 goal difference, and with a 2-0 lead over South City Royals they were on a canter to qualification until the Royals came back to win 3-4, leapfrogging into 2nd with a 2 point lead on Selwyn. On completion of this match, Selwyn dropped to 5th place.
Selwyn's match was against Nelson Suburbs, a dangerous spoiler who were out of the running for the season but had consistently been in the top 2 of the Mainland Premier League in recent years. Selwyn went behind 1-0 in the first half, equalised in the second and were looking like a 4th place finish until they scored a winner in extra time to leap up to 2nd place and qualification. Again, see the final day report for more.
Will the fairytale continue? Will Selwyn scrape into the top 2 of the National League on the final weekend? Will they snaffle the National Grand Final with a goal in extra time? Will they somehow sneak through to win OFC Champions League final? And finally, will they find a way to pip a footballing juggernaut like Bayern Munich on penalties in the final of the Club World Cup to win the $US6million prize?
Most would say it's unlikely. But it was unlikely for them to even have gotten this far. Do we dare bet against them? I'll certainly be following their progress closely.
Footnote: National Womens League
With suspension of the Northern Premier Womens League due to covid restrictions, the current top four teams will qualify for the National Womens League as follows: Eastern Suburbs, Western Springs, Northern Rovers and Hamilton Wanderers.
Wanderers are the only club from outside the three major centres to qualify for the National League across both men and women. More provincial representation would be great, and the retention of Central and Southern franchise teams may make sense from a logistical perspective but is disappointing because it prevents clubs with a good pedigree from qualifying such as South City Royals (nee Dunedin Technical), Coastal Spirit and Wellington United.
And now that the Wellington Phoenix will have a W-League team, they'll need to give their reserves some competitive matches too. It seems obvious they'll mirror the men by playing for Upper Hutt City in the winter league and fielding a Phoenix team in the National League. But maybe not this season given the recency of the announcement.
Looking further ahead, the women should have the same "stairway to heaven" as the men with a confederation club competition like the OFC Champions League, and a Women's Club World Cup with a crazy payday.
