Early this week our Girls Football teams competed in the very competitive NH Football Zone Day at Ashley Park.
Year 8
Year 8 Girls headed to the tournament with a few key absences due to other school events- most noticeably no recognised GK. In pool play the girls won 3-0, 9-0 and drew 0-0- despite dominating the game. This led to NX topping the pool and playing TNIS in the 1⁄4 finals. NX took an ensured confident win 3-0 to advance smoothly. The semi final was a tense affair against Belmont with NX surviving a late offside call in their favour to take the game to a penalty shootout. Alyssa Wilson had turned into our GK for the day and she made 2 crucial penalty saves and scored the winning penalty to send NX into the final. In the final the NX Girls put up a brave effort but were unfortunately beaten by a strong MBIS team 2-0 to leave the girls as runners up in North Harbour- an excellent achievement!
Year 7
Due to the growing popularity of girls football at NX we entered two NX teams (Rovers and Gunners) into the Y7 Zone Day. Again, NX entered the tournaments with no recognised GK’s due to injury. It wouldn’t prove too much of a problem as multiple girls put in solid displays in order to help their teams. The NX Rovers won their pool comfortably with 3-0 and 9-0 wins. The Gunners came 2nd in their pool with a solid 2-1 win v AJHS and a very unlucky 2-1 loss to MBIS Sharks. This saw both the NX teams end up on the same side of the draw with a potential semi-final meeting looming. In the ¼ Finals Rovers took on MBIS Dolphins and the Gunners versus Belmont. The Rovers played with a solid structure and moved the ball well across the field, securing an excellent 7-0 victory. The Gunners had a ding dong of a battle with Belmont which saw the game end 0-0 and go to a penalty shootout. Unfortunately for the Gunners they lost in sudden death penalties putting them into the playoffs for 5th to 8th place. The girls bounced back from the penalty heartbreak to then go on to comfortably defeat MBIS Dolphins 3-1 and Northcote 3-0 to finish 5th out of 12 teams- a fantastic effort!
These results meant NX Rovers came up against Belmont in the semi-final. Rovers upped their game again and played their best football of the day to achieve a very composed 3-0 victory and push them on to the final. The final was against MBIS Sharks. Rovers started the game well and had a few good chances before Keera Dotcom beat two defenders and angled a finish across the keeper into the bottom corner. Keera then doubled Rovers’ lead with a break away goal to put NX 2-0 up at half time. The 2nd half was a different affair with Rovers struggling to make any use of the ball when they had and some poor positional discipline saw us end up drawing the game 2-2. Penalties. Rovers changed their keeper in the dying minutes of the game in preparation and this worked in our favour as Isla Bourhill made a crucial save with the scores tied. After a tug of war over who had the penalty advantage, Isla then stepped up to slot the winning penalty and the drama was over and NX Rovers were crowned the North Harbour Champs! On we march to Auckland Champs in a few weeks time.
Marc Rowlinson – Teacher in Charge
