Wanganui City's Anthony Bell falls in a battle with North End goal keeper Craig Tichbon during City's 5-0 Horizons Premiership win on Saturday. Photo/ Lewis Gardner
Wanganui City's Anthony Bell falls in a battle with North End goal keeper Craig Tichbon during City's 5-0 Horizons Premiership win on Saturday. Photo/ Lewis Gardner
The Horizons Premiership has come down to the final weekend.
Big Orange Wanganui City 1sts beat North End 5-0 on Saturday to stay in the title race with Hokowhitu FC Rangers despite the weather threatening to have hand.
Ten minutes of torrential rain midway through the first half had officialsconcerned about player safety and reaching for the rule book.
Fortunately the heavy rain cleared and an entertaining 90 minutes was able to be completed atop a waterlogged pitch.
The win keeps City one point behind league leaders Hokowhitu, who hammered Marist Development 11-0, and now all eyes will be on Palmerston North next Saturday where the title will be decided.
For City to be holding up the trophy next weekend they'll firstly need to account for Massey Celtic - which they should - while hoping third placed Palmerston North Boys' High can pull off a massive upset over Hokowhitu.
The latter is much less likely.
Saturday's game at Wembley Park belied the conditions with attacking, creative football on show from both sides and plenty of chances early on.
It took 31 minutes, however, until man of the match Marcus Jones slotted the opener for City from inside the box.
Anthony Bell scored the first of his brace two minutes later running on to a assist from Latham Berry just before the worst of the rain set in.
North End would have felt like they should have had a least one goal at the break such was the chances they created but they were effectively shut down well by City's backs and by a couple of stunning saves from keeper Glenn Graham.
After a halftime discussion about the conditions it was decided to carry on unless further heavy rain came over.
City were concerned as they needed three points to stay in the title race and at least 60 minutes needed to be played to constitute a match.
"Both teams were happy to continue to play on," City coach Kelvin Francis said.
"If it had rained again I think the referee would have looked at calling it."
In the end the second half was able to be completed and despite players struggling with their footing City managed to score three more goals.
The visitors had a chance to pull one back in the 1st minute of the second half winning a penalty when Josh Jonas clipped a North End player running into the box but Michael O'Neill skied the spot kick over the cross bar.
Dan Aplin's 56th minute goal probably sealed the win for City who then shifted up a gear.
Goal scorer Dan Aplin keeps an eyes on the header of North End's Lee Ndlovu.
Bell had a handful of second half chances but took until the 79th minute to get his second, rounding North End keeper Craig Tichbon to find the back of the net.
He is now the league's second highest goal scorer with 15 in 14 games and one behind Hokowhitu's Phillip King who has played three more matches.
The goal of the match came in the final minute when Josh Ngapeka backed heeled the ball to Simon Petersen who from out on the right hand side of the field drove the ball into the top left-hand corner.
Francis said it was a brilliant performance from his side given the weather.
"We played some really nice football. In fact, both teams played some really attractive football," he said.
"Can't ask for anything more than that in conditions like this. It was atrocious."
He said the way City went about the match was the most pleasing part.
"We didn't train last week because of the weather so we knew that we needed to come out and just be patient again," he said.
"We can't afford to come out and just steamroll teams in 20 minutes, it doesn't really work. We need to keep the ball, push it around, tire them out, then we can steamroll them."
Francis knows any title hopes are out of his hands now and all they can do is win next week.
"And then hope Boys' High can do us a favour," he said.
"I think that they're well capable of doing it and if there was any team left to play Hokowhitu, we'd probably want it to be them."
