Maccabi Hakoah Futsal Club to play in NZ
The Maccabi Hakoah Futsal Club have been invited to participate in the inaugural season of the New Zealand National Futsal League. In an unprecedented move, and on the back of Last season’s Premiership and Grand final victories, organizers of the tournament opted to mirror the position of the Wellington Phoenix in the A league by inviting Maccabi Hakoah FC to take part in the 8 team tournament.
The tournament will be taking place in three locations; Auckland (November), Wellington (February) and Dunedin (March) with each team playing 5 games over the course of each of the weekends. Football NSW and the FFA have been extremely supportive of Maccabi Hakoah FC’s travel plans and see this as an opportunity to consolidate Futsal relationships with our trans Tasman partners while at the same time seeing the tournament and MHFC’s involvement therein as a precursor to either a trans Tasman competition or the introduction of a National League in Australia.
Team and Club Captain Doron Pozniak and coach Gareth Naar (Standing in for Steve Knight) will lead a squad of 13 players across the Tasman to commence battle against the New Zealand teams. Doron has stated his satisfaction at the balance between experience and youth in the team and, with an average age of 22, plans to use the New Zealand adventure as a warm up for the European Maccabiah games in Vienna in July next year.
The teams registered for the NZF National league are:
Club/Centre Location
East City Futsal East Auckland
Auckland Futsal Central Auckland
Capital City Futsal Wellington
Hawkes Bay Futsal Napier
Red Sox Manawatu Futsal Palmerston North
Football South-Futsal Dunedin
Queenstown Falcons Futsal Queenstown
Maccabi Hakoah Futsal Sydney
In other news, the Maccabi Hakoah Futsal Club has experienced their best ever start to the Super League season as well as achieving a record 7 wins out of 9 on game day 3 against the Hills Brumbies. The u12 boys team (currently 4th) and the u12 girls team(Currently 4th) have each won 2 out of their first three games which is a first in the short history of MHFC and the ALL Age men (2nd) and Youth Men (4th) remain unbeaten. Special mention to the U16 Girls team who won 13-2 over the weekend to be earn the title TEAM OF THE WEEK. These girls have been with the club for a number of years and have been on the receiving end of a number of heavy defeats. To see them emerge victorious and to see them playing amazing Futsal was the absolute highlight of game day 3. Well done to Archie and the girls!
Well done also to Slava Platkov (week3) and Daniel Fulton (week 2) for making the Football NSW team of the week.
