Auckland City FC's Angus Kilkolly celebrates a goal. Photo / Shane Wenzlick
When Auckland City FC striker Angus Kilkolly runs out against Bayern Munich at the Fifa Club World Cup on Monday morning, the first thing he will do is look to the heavens.
Before the biggest match of his life, Kilkolly will be thinking about the biggest losses of his life.
Auckland City’s squad are full of heroic stories, of players who have thrived against the odds to arrive at this surreal junction on a massive stage. But none greater than Kilkolly, who has endured unspeakable family tragedy over the past few years.
“These big games are the ones where I think about them more,” Kilkolly tells the Herald. “It’s something I’ve learned in the past year – it’s not the bad days that are the worst. Sometimes it’s the good moments that are the worst, because you actually want to celebrate with them.”
The 29-year-old is a stalwart of the domestic football scene, a consistent scorer at club and Oceania level. His goals are a big reason why Auckland City are in the United States, helping them to national titles and Oceania triumphs over the past four years that sealed qualification for this mega-event.
But those years have also been the hardest of Kilkolly’s life, though he has persevered through the grief.
“I’ve always looked at it thinking there’s two ways you can go – you can go down or you go up. I always wanted to go up, so it gave me more of a drive to succeed. A push to be successful and have the best career I can because I’d rather that than go the opposite way.”
Club officials still marvel at his dedication, focus and capacity to move on.
“The stuff that has happened is pretty bad,” says Auckland City chairman Ivan Vuksich. “And he’s just dug in and he’s got the camaraderie of the team, the club. We’ve all supported him, but he’s unique, he just wants to do it and he loves the club.
“He couldn’t wait to get back, start training and working hard. Look, he’s just a warrior. I don’t know what else to say. He’s an unbelievable personality.”
Club general manager Gordon Watson has similar sentiments.
“Often I’ve been in awe of him, how he keeps going,” says Watson. “Thinking to myself, ‘Gus, how do you do that?’”
It hasn’t been easy. In April last year, he was saying a final goodbye to his father, Tim Kilkolly. Like most dads, Tim was a hero to his son and fully involved in his sporting career, with a memorable trip to Vanuatu in 2023 to support Auckland City on another successful Oceania Champions League mission.
“That’s an experience I always look back on,” says Kilkolly. “Him and my mum coming over, seeing the final the year before.”
The diagnosis of pancreatic cancer had come out of the blue.
“It was a shock,” recalls Kilkolly. “I remember Christmas, January, no issues. He went on holiday in February and then came back, fell sick, got the diagnosis. And within the space of a month, he went from living a normal life to being bedridden.”
At the start of last year, Kilkolly was discussing his impending century of games for Auckland City with his father, during his trip home to Hastings for Christmas.
“I was sitting on about 90 games and he was saying, ‘Oh, I’m going to make sure I’m in Auckland for the 100th game.’ Then he got sick before the season started. But I think he was hanging on for that one.”
The two shared an emotional final conversation a few days before Kilkolly flew out to represent Auckland City at the 2024 Oceania Champions League tournament in Tahiti.
“He loved football – he wanted me to go on achieving,” says Kilkolly. “My last words I said to him were, ‘I will keep trying to make you proud.’ Winning games and coming into these tournaments and doing the best I can, leaving nothing out there is the promise I made to him and what I’ll keep trying to do.”
As well as his father, who died on Anzac Day last year, Kilkolly will have his brother Sean deep in his thoughts on Monday. His older sibling took his own life three years ago.
“It happened on a Thursday night,” says Kilkolly. “I remember being at training [in Te Atatū] and I got the phone call.”
Moving on hasn’t been easy. How could it be? There has – and continues to be – deep sorrow and grief, along with the emotional pain that accompanies such traumatic events. But football, and the deep friendships within the squad, have played a big role.
“In terms of resilience, football is always a distraction,” says Kilkolly. “Having a lot of my best mates in the team, obviously we train a lot and you’re always busy. So looking back, getting through those times was being around mates, playing for a top club, having support from them. It made that period a bit easier. And like anything, time is the healer and you can’t dwell on the past. You’ve just got to keep going.
“And playing football and winning is also how you get through it. In both of those seasons that happened, I scored the winning goal in the grand final at the end of that year, which told me the work I was doing was paying off.”
Kilkolly has an indomitable spirit, blessed with a strength of character that few possess.
“You’ve got to be resilient and accept that life isn’t easy,” he says. “There’s always going to be punches, there’s always going to be blows, but it’s how many times you get up and keep going.”
Kilkolly’s football career began at the Maycenvale United club in Hastings. Sean played, so Angus followed him along. Soon, Tim would also coach. Kilkolly was a standout, making regional representative teams before stepping up to play for Hawke’s Bay United in the New Zealand Football Championship. In 2014, he moved to Auckland to join Wanderers SC, a squad brought together ahead of the 2015 Under-20 World Cup, though he later missed the final cut for the tournament.
“That kind of thing is always tough, but it’s an opinion-based sport,” says Kilkolly. “You don’t let those things determine your pedigree.”
Over the next six years, he spent time at Canterbury United, Team Wellington, Hawke’s Bay and Waitākere United, as well as a five-month stint playing professionally in Lithuania in 2016. His time in Wellington was memorable for the journey to the 2018 Fifa Club World Cup, where Jose Figueira’s team led Al-Ain 3-0 in the opening game before the UAE champions got back to 3-3, then prevailed on penalties.
“It’s still hard to believe,” recalls Kilkolly. “It was an awesome experience, but to not win the game was gutting.”
He joined Auckland City in March 2021 and has racked up 125 matches in navy blue, with his 65 goals the third-highest in club history. He has featured in two more editions of the Fifa Club World Cup – including playing in front of 50,000 people in Morocco in 2022 – as well as last year’s Fifa Intercontinental Cup, along with plenty of Oceania adventures.
Football fits alongside a busy working life. A painter/decorator by trade – “Not easy, being on your feet all day” – he has been a regional manager at Milwaukee Tool for the past 18 months. He is at work every morning by 7.30am in Penrose, finishing around 4.30pm, before the drive across town to training in Te Atatū four nights a week.
“You can get stuck in traffic for an hour or more. Then train, get home at 9 o’clock, dinner, sleep. It’s on repeat and there is not much downtime. It sounds tough, but in terms of the sacrifice and the reward, being able to come to these tournaments makes it all totally worth it. All of us make big sacrifices.“
Kilkolly hasn’t had a holiday in years, burning through his leave every year for football trips. This year, he has already taken 10 weeks, thanks to unpaid leave and a “very understanding” boss.
“We’ve only got a small window of our life playing football at this level, so you need to make the most of it.”
On Monday (4am NZT), Kilkolly and Auckland City FC will face an almost impossible task against Bayern Munich. The Sandringham-based side have competed in plenty of global competitions over the past 15 years, including the memorable third-place finish at the 2014 Club World Cup.
But nothing quite like this. Not against the biggest club in Germany, who have won the Bundesliga 34 times. Not against a club that have been champions of Europe on six occasions, reaching the final another five times. Not against a squad that contains England captain Harry Kane and a host of other international stars. It’s a forbidding, formidable assignment, a mismatch of resources, talent and experience almost beyond measure. But Kilkolly is excited, rather than daunted.
“It’s about making the most of the opportunity. It’s not often amateur footballers from New Zealand get to play in this situation. Some professionals won’t even get to play against Harry Kane, for example. We’re definitely not naive about the challenge ahead, but it’s a great experience and we just want to make sure we enjoy it, do our best and leave the field with our heads held high.”
Whatever happens, he is determined to savour the experience and honour his late father and brother, lying side by side at Waipawa Cemetery in Hawke’s Bay.
“[My father and brother] are always in the back of my mind,” says Kilkolly. “I’m never going to forget them, but also I’m wanting to make my own story. I know Mum will be super proud, my sisters will be proud and, when I score an important goal and stuff like that, I always look up and just say thank you.”
Michael Burgess has been a sports journalist for the New Zealand Herald since 2005, covering the Olympics, Fifa World Cups, and America’s Cup campaigns. He is a co-host of the Big League podcast.
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