Football: Crowley leads winning fray

Tikipunga's Mark Burkill takes the aerobatic route on Saturday against FC Whangarei. Photo / Michael Cunningham

A Michael Crowley hat-trick helped Tikipunga return to winning form with an emphatic 5-3 defeat of FC Whangarei.

The visitors to Tikipunga Park had won their two previous matches in the Northland Premier Grade but the home side had something to prove after a narrow defeat to Central Brown last weekend and Crowley was just the boost they needed, Tikipunga coach Bill Gibson said.

"Michael's been playing with our second division team but he stepped up and made a big difference to us today - he held the ball up and helped us play the kind of game we've been trying to," he said. "The boys played really good possession football and showed a bit more consistency than we did last week ... when we created chances but didn't finish them - this week we managed to finish them off," he said.

Daniel Challenor scored the other two Tikipunga goals, with the home team enjoying a good first spell to lead 3-1 at the break.

FC Whangarei fought back in the second spell but neither side really dominated and Crowley completed his hat-trick before taking a well-earned break in the final quarter.

"All credit to FC Whangarei, they were decimated by injury and some of their team had played a game before our match even kicked off but they were strengthened by three northern league players so we were quite pleased with our performance," Gibson said.

Kamo and Central Brown were scheduled to play each other in the premier division on Saturday but were instead eliminated from the Chatham Cup national knockout competition in contrasting styles.

Central Brown were demolished 7-0 by Ranui Swanson in Auckland but the result had little adverse effect on a successful club outing while the Kamo club were left distraught by a 0-2 defeat by Franklin United at Kamo Sportspark. The home side had no luck all day. They conceded an own goal when defender Sam Rout headed into his own net from a corner. Kamo had the ball in the Pukekohe side's net soon afterward but the goal was disallowed for offside and that set the tone for the rest of the game.

When Kamo's goalkeeper Shane Stanners was sent off for handling the ball outside the area and Abbu Zahid Shaheed scored from the resulting freekick, Kamo's fate was sealed. In other Northland Premier league matches Kerikeri dismantled Bream Bay 7-1 while Onerahi provided the upset of the round by beating Kaitaia 3-1 away at Taipa to move ahead of them on the table.

Onerahi were behind 0-1 at the break but goals to Matt Andrews, Thomas Bradshaw and Dean Nuttell saw them take the points with Dan Draisey his team's man-of-the-match for his great performance in goal.

Kerikeri's Rodrigo Sala scored a hat-trick with Robbie Kingman scoring in his 10th consecutive match while Mark Roberts was awarded player of the day in the win against Bream Bay.