The biggest losers... and loving it

Craig Morrissey. Photo / Greg Bowker

Meet Auckland's - and quite possibly New Zealand's - worst football team.

The Western Blues have not won a league game in two years and boast an unenviable record of 24 straight defeats - and in those games they have conceded 266 goals and scored only 20.

"It can be demoralising sometimes," says player-manager Stephen Merriman. "But we would rather lose 18-0 every week than not play at all."

The team is at the foot of the bottom league in Auckland's Sunday football competition. They were relegated last year, but the lower division has not been any easier.

Goalkeeper Craig Morrissey, a tax consultant, has picked the ball out of his own net an average of once every nine minutes since the season began. But he points out that it's likely to be more than that "once you include the goals that the referee disallowed".

"It's good, though, because I get lots of action - and I get player of the day most weeks."

The team, formed four years ago, is the only one in the Auckland Sunday Football Association which has a female player. And Bridget Rule, 25, an engineering student, says she enjoys spending her wet winter afternoons running around a pitch with "a load of sweaty men".

Rule believes the team has been unlucky on several occasions and, with a stroke or two of fortune, could have had some better results.

That looked to be the case last Sunday when Western Blues took on Los Halcones 2.

In the best passage of play, a sweeping passing move from one end of the pitch to the other by Western Blues culminated in the striker beating the goalkeeper ... only for his shot to ricochet off both posts and out of the goalmouth. Los Halcones 2 went straight up the other end of the pitch and scored.

But the calamitous run of results does not mean Western Blues players are any less dedicated than any of the other 30,000 who play the game every weekend in Auckland.

Midfielder Eric Jeffery's wife was due to give birth on Sunday, but he was there giving the pre-match team talk and then taking the field.

Western Blues lost 6-1.

Merriman vowed the team would be back.

"We come out week in week out because we love the game - and, hey, next week could be our week."

Craig Harrison, secretary of the Auckland Sunday Football Association, said Western Blues showed what the sport was about at the grassroots.

"They are the best bunch and we've never had a negative report about them. They turn up each week - sometimes losing by 10 goals - then they shake hands with the opposition and go for a drink.

"And then they turn up with smiles on their faces the next week. Getting out there and giving it a go is what it's all about."