Tag: phoenix

Phoenix in ‘not crap’ shock

Wel­ling­ton Phoenix 3 Sydney FC 0

The Phoenix made a lot of friends on Sunday after­noon with a con­fid­ent dis­play against an out of sorts Sydney side. Rarely troubled at the back, show­ing good enter­prise and pace going for­ward, and superbly mar­shalled by the exper­i­enced Ross Aloisi in cent­ral mid­field, the Phoenix looked bet­ter than both the Rufer-era Kingz and the woe­ful Knights put togeth­er.

The offi­cial attend­ance was just over 6,000 (which is sen­sa­tion­al for a pre-sea­son match) and the organ­isers sens­ibly stuck us all on one side of the ground to help har­ness the atmo­sphere. The offi­cial site has yet to be updated with the res­ult and Stuff don’t have a match report so I’ll tell you that there were two goals for Shane Smeltz plus an own goal from an unknown Sydney play­er.

The Brazili­an num­ber 4 Cleber­son is going to be a def­in­ite crowd favour­ite – he’s a big lump of a bloke and he totally bossed the cent­ral defence, win­ning everything in the air – and com­pat­ri­ot Cor­tes looked pretty lively down the right wing.

Phoenix match tick­ets go on sale on August 13 and I’d recom­mend get­ting into them early, par­tic­u­larly as more than half the games are kid-friendly Sunday after­noon affairs and it won’t stay this cold forever.

Phoenix: Warm-up Match Moved Again

The first Wel­ling­ton Phoenix home pre-sea­son game has been moved for the second time. Ori­gin­ally announced for the Basin Reserve, at some point it was switched to New­town Park and now, accord­ing to the offi­cial site it has been moved to West­pac Sta­di­um due to “concerns that New­town Park would not have the capa­city to cope with the big crowd expected.”

Sunday at 2.00pm is kick-off time and the tick­ets are only $10 (and free for under 16s). Oppos­i­tion Sydney FC are one of the A‑League glam­our sides (former Liv­er­pool and Eng­land star Rob­bie Fowl­er was over there dis­cuss­ing terms for a move last week) and should give the Phoenix a test.

I’m gut­ted the match has been moved from the Basin as I wanted to tell the story of the last time there was a major foot­ball match there back in 1994 (maybe). The All Whites were play­ing an exhib­i­tion match against top Ger­man out­fit Wer­der Bre­men and legend Wyn­ton Rufer was going to play a half for each side. As is so often the case, far more people turned up than expec­ted and most of us were still queuing out­side when the game kicked off. Any­way, a young lady in one of the flats above the trophy shop oppos­ite decided to ease our pain a little by lift­ing her t‑shirt over her head and giv­ing us a flash. But, I’ll have to tell that story some oth­er time.

If you are a Google Cal­en­dar user you can click on the but­ton below to sub­scribe to my Wel­ling­ton Phoenix fix­tures cal­en­dar, let­ting you know when and where the lads will be play­ing each week­end so you can either get your tick­ets or set your MySky.

Wellington Phoenix FC

Gah. If the stor­ies we’re hear­ing tonight are true, then we are … under­whelmed.

Ser­i­ously, Black Star Wel­ling­ton was the bomb.

And even Wel­ling­ton City or Wel­ling­ton FC were bet­ter options.

But … “Phoenix”?

Ah well.

Update. Well, it’s offi­cial, and, hav­ing slept on it, I sup­pose it’s some­thing we can live with. At least it’s not the Wel­ling­ton Bumble­bees.

What’s in a name #1

So, per­haps the most drawn out sports decision ever to be made by an Aus­tralasi­an sport­ing body has finally been con­firmed, and a Wel­ling­ton bid has won the right field a team in Aus­trali­a’s A‑League soc­cer com­pet­i­tion.

Now all they need is a name (oh, and some play­ers, and a home ground, but let’s not men­tion that).

So, what do we think. What’s a good name for our loc­al pro­fes­sion­al foot­ball team. The guys over at the A‑League dis­cus­sion for­ums have come up with some sug­ges­tions…

• Wel­ling­ton Wiz­ards
• Wel­ling­ton Won­ders
• Wel­ling­ton Wan­der­ers

…but, you know, that whole sports team allit­er­a­tion thing is a bit passé. There’s some sup­port for just con­tinu­ing the Knights (noooo!), and, like­wise, for a good old fash­ioned append­age like United, FC, or City. Today’s Dom­Post had these sug­ges­tions…

• Wel­ling­ton Thun­der
• Wel­ling­ton Fever
• Wel­ling­ton Hor­nets
• Wel­ling­ton Blast

…of which Hor­nets does­n’t ring too bad, although, do we have hor­nets in Wel­ling­ton? Surely the Wel­ling­ton Killer Bees would be more appro­pri­ate? And des­pite the enthu­si­asm of the sup­port­ers on the back page of the Dom­Post today, I don’t think ‘Fever’ is the best idea in the world – the rich poten­tial for head­line puns when things go hor­ribly wrong is just too much to con­sider.

Any oth­er thoughts?