Kerikeri Invincibles 0 Brownsons All Stars 6 (ht 0-2): The Kerikeri Football Club celebrated the completion of a gruelling winter campaign in style by hosting an entertaining Golden Oldies game on Sunday.
The Brownsons All Stars,comprising mostly Auckland-based players who had all played at national league or higher at some stage in their careers, delivered a classy brand of football based on the head more than the heart. Naturally, considering the players were all over 50.
The visitors eventually proved too much for Kerikeri in a generally good-natured affair under grey skies and patches of drizzle.
Brownsons' spokesman Ted Midlane said the match had come about through a connection with Kevin Stratful, a former All White who once played for renowned English club, Tottenham Hotspurs and was now a resident businessman in Kerikeri.
Both had been influential in getting the Football Kingz - now the Wellington Phoenix - into the Australian A-League at the turn of the century.
Midlane said the Brownsons often played exhibition games against secondary school sides as a way of connecting young up-and-coming talent with New Zealand football's past stars of the game.
The Auckland players certainly made the most of their weekend in the Far North by playing several rounds at the nearby Bay of Islands Golf Club although a planned fishing trip had to be canned because of the surly weather.
As for hosts, the Kerikeri Invincibles, has any name ever been self applied to a sports team in such tongue-in-cheek fashion? Comprising senior luminaries - e.g. Stu Angus, James Coleman (proudly playing alongside his 16-year-old son Max who was about to depart for a football academy in the UK), Kaeo's Stefano Virgili et al - along with various youth and adult players, the hybrid squad proved competitive throughout and threatened to score on occasion.
The social game and aftermatch provided a fitting conclusion to the Kerikeri FC's two-day end-of-season festivities.
The weekend began on Saturday morning with the club's junior prizegiving and was followed by the Kerikeri Bay Builders team taking a supporters' bus to Kamo to play in the Fed One Cup final, which ended in a narrow PSO defeat to Tikipunga.
Perhaps the biggest gripe anyone could have about Sunday's match was that the actual team that arrived was nothing like the one promoted in last week's Age.
There it was noted the Brownsons were made up "predominantly" of former All White players, including several who played at the 1982 Fifa World Cup in Spain, and some who had "generously offered to fly in from all parts of the country and Australia to spend the weekend in the Bay of Islands".
There were two former All Whites there, Kevin Hagan who didn't leave the sideline, and Martin Jennison, although neither boasted World Cup credentials.
Thus anyone expecting to see the likes of Wynton Rufer, Ricky Herbert, Frank Van Hattum or any other of the class of '82 in action in Kerikeri on Sunday would have been sorely disappointed.
The promoters of the match defended themselves against accusations of hyperbole by noting the squad list provided by the Brownsons All Stars beforehand had featured 16 All Whites, including some of the '82 squad.
Oh well, the misleading claim certainly worked in one regard - by attracting the biggest crowd ever seen at a football match in the Far North this year.