Home draws for Napier teams in Chatham Cup second round

Mustafa Can, with ball at toe, pictured playing for Napier Marist against Massey University in 2020. He scored two goals in Saturday's 3-1 Chatham Cup Round 1 win over Massey in Palmerston North. Photo / Napier Marist FC

Two Chatham Cup matches will be played in Napier on the same day at King’s Birthday weekend, according to the Round 2 draw released by New Zealand Football on Tuesday.

The matches are each scheduled for 2pm on June 3, with five-times winner Napier City Rovers having had a bye in the first round last weekend and now drawn to play Island Bay United.

Napier Marist made their way through by beating Massey University 3-1 in Palmerston North on Saturday in Marist’s first Chatham Cup match since 2019, and will be up against North Wellington in a bid to get to the third round for the first time.

Marist’s win on Saturday was their sixth in six games this season, being unbeaten at the top of Hawke’s Bay’s YORB Pacific Premiership and having also won their opening match in the Central region Federation Cup knockout.

Coach Brett Angel had reckoned it would be a tough trip away, and it remained so until well into the second half at Memorial Park when, after each side had “missed a few”, Mustafa Can scored the first goal of the match, in the 56th minute.

Rueben Moffitt made it 2-0 to Marist in the 65th, Patrick Smiler pulled one back for Massey in the 85th, and Can got his second in the 90th minute, with a click or two of injury time to play.

“They did well,” Angel said. “It was even-stevens for a start. We missed a few, they missed a few, but I think we were a little more clinical in the second half.”

Marist have scored 20 goals this season, and conceded just three and it’s not the first time the club have reached Round 2 in the Cup.

In 2019 they exited in a 3-1 Queen’s Birthday weekend loss to Stop Out in Wellington, after Can scored twice in a 5-2 Round 1 win over New Plymouth Rangers, and in 2017 after beating Gisborne Thistle 2-0 in a qualifying round match in Napier and the Red Sox 4-3 in a Round 1 match in Palmerston North, the club’s first wins in Chatham Cup football.

The Rovers won the Chatham Cup in 1985, 1993, 2000, 2002 and 2019, a total of five wins bettered by only four other clubs in the cup’s 100 year history and the most by any club outside of Auckland and Christchurch.

Rovers are currently fifth, with three wins, three losses and a draw, in the Central League.

Meanwhile, the Havelock North Wanders women’s team, which plays in the Central Federation League, made it through to the second round of the Kate Sheppard Cup without kicking a ball, after Taranaki side Kaitaki defaulted their match which was to have been played at Guthrie Park, Havelock North, on Sunday.

The Wanderers have drawn an away game against Palmerston North Marist in Round 2, also at King’s Birthday weekend..