Kerikeri FC ~ Our Club

From a humble start in 1978 The Kerikeri Football Club has
developed into a club with 18 teams in the Mid-North Junior League and seven in the Northland Youth League. Additionally it has a strong senior premier team and two teams in the Northland Women’s League.

Luckily the club is not short of coaches and has massive support
from parents. There are training sessions for coaches every season, something we hope to develop further with even more sessions.

Over the years Kerikeri has fielded a lot of good young players. Greg Nash, Rex Faithfull, Joe Mark, Marco Eugster,
Thor Jeppesen, Micah Simons and Jackson Stewart were all part of one of our most successful youth teams.

With accomplished English coach Robin Spinks they won the Northland 14th grade Youth League in 2002, moved up one year early to the 17th grade Northland Youth League in 2003 and won it – and became champions again the following year.

Most recently, Mitchell Pomfret has impressed. He was given a trial for English Premiership club Bolton at the end of 2008. Another very young player to take note of is Rupert Mark.

While Robin Spinks’ youth team was a great success, it also demonstrates the limitations a club like Kerikeri faces:
only one of them, Jackson Stewart, is still in Kerikeri. The rest of them are spread all over New Zealand, pursuing education and careers that they can’t get in Kerikeri.

The Kerikeri senior men’s team with Stu Angus as player/coach dominated the Northland Premiership League in the
end of the nineties and the beginning of the 2000s winning the championship several seasons.

Kerikeri has still got a strong presence in Northland men’s football, having finished in the middle of the Premiership
league for a couple of seasons. With young players like Jeremy Rintoul, Sam Green, Thomas Wade, Jackson Stewart, Mark Coleman, James Welsh and internationals Tibor Veselka, Zdenek Rosa and Tomas Trombik signing up  again, the team should be able to take it even further this season.

The club has been dominating the Women’s Northland Premiership League for years. This season Kerikeri Siteworx, coached by Ross Campbell, were runners up and Russell McCabe’s Kerikeri High Waipapa Auto Court came third.
Many locals have given their time and support to the club over the years.

Russell McCabe was president of the club for six years until he retired three years ago. One of his main achievements was the building of the Bay Sport club house in Waipapa. Russell is still coaching: Kerikeri High Girls in the Northland Women’s League.

The Kerikeri Football Club Committee for the last three years has had a wide variety of parents, players and coaches represented, with the main people being President Alan Oliver, Manager Lane Ayr and Secretary Ann Kearney, and
until recently junior coordinator Daniel Miller. They are all accomplished organisation people and have taken the club to a new level, making it incorporated and securing greater sponsorship and funding.

The committee hopes to take the development of the club even further.