Central Mark Women’s Cup Debut In Style
by Jeremy Ruane
with the compliments of www.sportswebsoccer.com
Central United, a club forever synonymous with Chatham Cup success, marked their National Women’s Knockout Cup debut in style on May 15, overpowering Bay Olympic 9-0 at Olympic Park in this Central Auckland derby to advance to the second round of the competition.
Both teams received a bit of a shock before kick-off when they learned that they would be playing ninety minutes, rather than their usual eighty, and that there would be no rolling substitutes, another feature of social grade football with which they are familiar.
But those are the terms and conditions which come with the territory when bidding to take on the big guns of the game in this country, so both Bay and Central got stuck in from the outset in this tussle, with little between the teams early on.
Perhaps it was the arrival of the club’s biggest fan which prompted United to step up a gear around the quarter-hour mark, for there was certainly only one team in it from the moment “Bucketman”’s familiar “Yellow Yellow” cries began to resound around the velodrome.