Could this be United’s bumper season?

LEAGUE WINNERS: Heavy Equipment Services Gisborne United won the women’s football competition played on Sundays. United played 12 games, won 11 and drew one to end the season with 34 points, three ahead of runners-up Gisborne Laundry Services Riverina. United scored 74 goals and conceded seven for a goal difference of 67. Team members are, back (from left): Rubi Perano, Kayley Knight, Taryn Walford, manager/trainer Josh Adams, Tessa McDonald, coach Molly Adams and Kirstie Lovell. Middle: Chelsea Simpson, Paare Ahuriri-Leach, Karen McDonald, Sarah Graham and Riria Stuart. Front: Mel Knight. Absent: Becca Peach, Amber Church, Jamie Gedye, Kat Taylor, Hana Edwardson and Tyler Andrews. Picture supplied

FOOTBALL

IT is shaping up to be a big year for Gisborne United football club.

The club’s women’s team have won the league competition without losing a game, and are in the final of the Braybrook Cup.

Their opponents in the cup final will be the team who were runners-up in the league, Gisborne Laundry Services Riverina. That game is set down for September 1.

In June, the club’s third men’s team won the Poverty Bay Cup, the knockout competition traditionally contested by local third-tier teams.

They beat Gisborne Conference front-runners ITM Thistle, who had already beaten them 7-1 in the league this season.

Regulation time in the cup final ended with the score at 3-3 and the game went straight to penalties, a shootout that Heavy Equipment Services United won 8-7 (all the club’s teams have the same naming-rights sponsor).

In the Conference competition, United sit a point behind ITM Thistle, who also have a game in hand.

United teams are flying high in the Gisborne Championship Division 1, the highest local level of football, and the Pacific Premiership, where Gisborne teams United and Thistle take on Hawke’s Bay sides.

United lead the Championship on goal difference from Carpet Court Thistle Massive, and on August 17 will play the final of the Bailey Cup against Gisborne Boys’ High School.

But it is in the Pacific Premiership that Gisborne United have made the biggest impact.

They lead the competition with 32 points from 13 games — 10 wins, two draws and one loss (to Thistle).

Fuelled by a dynamic midfield and Josh Adams’s seemingly insatiable appetite for goals, United have set the standard for attacking play in the Pacific Premiership.

Gisborne Vehicle Testing Thistle are one point behind, and their goal difference is only three shy of United’s. In recent weeks, a posse of Hawke’s Bay clubs have eased closer to the top-of-the-table action.

But with only three games to go in the league, it is hard to see any team other than the Gisborne rivals finishing the season with the title in safekeeping for the summer.