You'll never win anything with kids, apparently. Try telling that to Lower Hutt City who dashed Napier City Rovers' dreams of a second successive Chatham Cup soccer final with a 2-0 defeat on Saturday in the Hutt Valley.
According to the yellow and greens manager, Brendan McIntyre, the average age of Hutt's starting line-up for the fourth round encounter was 19, and included Phoenix development players Hamish Watson and Scott Basalaj. McIntyre even threw on a 15-year-old late on.
Meanwhile, Rovers had two players, Cole Peverley and Jarrod Smith, who have played in the All Whites' strip; had much the same team as last season and some of their key players, such as Danny Wilson and Regan Cameron, have been with the club for several years. They're no team of veterans but they have a lot of experience, skill and confidence.
And yet little of that was on show at the weekend.
Rovers were comprehensively beaten: despite losing twice to the Napier side this season in the Central League, the youthful side were very comfortable on the ball and dumped Napier from the cup with ease, thanks to two second half goals from Tobias Bertsch and Watson.
Glaswegian McIntyre was naturally in seventh heaven after taking the team to the Chatham Cup quarter-finals for the first time in a decade.
"There was only one team in it today," he said. "At halftime we were unlucky not to go in a goal or two up, we worked really hard, but they created very little until the last five minutes," said McIntyre.
"We played poorly up there (at Park Island), we were quite naive in that match, and got caught out easily. They defended very well, they sit in, two banks of four, and we struggled against that, our movement was poor. Today, we were determined to start well and we did just that."
They started so well that Rovers barely had a chance in the first 45 minutes, Andy Pickering had two half-chances while Smith's excellent shot after a driving run was parried away by goalkeeper Basalaj.
Straight from the restart Smith went on another driving run, but found Jose Cantillo in an awkward position in front of goal.
This was pretty much as good as it got for the Bay side. All the creative work came from the home side, and their effort was rewarded on 57 minutes through Bertsch, the German easily finishing off a fine move - but where on earth were the Rovers defenders?
Hamish Watson was Rovers' nemesis, darting past defenders with ease, and on 86 minutes he was awarded with Hutt's second, cutting inside two players before driving past the Czech goalkeeper Jerry Tesar.
These were the decisive chances; suffice to say there were numerous others.
Rovers coach Grant Hastings was in no mood to pull his punches several minutes after the final whistle.
"We have not been anywhere near accurate, to be honest I don't think we have been at all good today in lots of areas.
"We were better in the second half than we were in the first, but take nothing away from them, they deserved to win."
Rovers had a strong team, with Danny Wilson back, but the midfielder was anonymous, though he was far from the only one as experienced players failed to find a spark and ignite Rovers' faltering effort.
"You can't point the finger at individual players. As a team it just didn't happen for us," said Hastings. "We didn't deserve to win today."
The game was a fitting farewell for goalscoring hero Tobias Bertsch who left New Zealand for Europe 24 hours after the match in a bid to pursue a career in Germany, having been picked up by fifth division side TSG Balingen, who are based south of Stuttgart.
"They are a semi-professional team, and the league is quite a high standard," the 19-year-old striker said.
"It will be a big step up, but it is a great opportunity for me and I hope to be able to make my mark with Balingen and then hopefully be spotted by a bigger club."
Bertsch returns to study in Germany and has been holidaying in New Zealand while also, of course, playing for Lower Hutt.
Now Napier must focus on winning the Central League with a return trip to the Wellington region this weekend, when they take on Tawa. Maycenvale United lost their Central League clash 3-1 to Western Suburbs in Wellington on Saturday after trailing 2-0 at halftime.
Captain Rafael De Gregorio scored Maycenvale's goal.