Football: 2025 NZ Marist Football Tournament to be hosted in Whanganui for first time

Whanganui Marist Football Club president Russell Eades is excited to host the 2025 New Zealand Marist Football Tournament for the first time. Photo / Fin Ocheduszko Brown

The 2025 New Zealand Marist Football Tournament will be played in Whanganui for the first time in its 39th edition.

The tournament has attracted North Island Marist clubs - Gisborne, Napier, Taupō, Palmerston North, Hastings and Birkinhead – to compete at Wembley Park, with Whanganui Marist Football Club to have teams in all the grades.

Across the competing clubs, there will be 27 teams, with open men’s, open women’s and masters divisions.

There will likely be a social section after the completion of the round robin fixtures.

In 2024’s tournament, held in Wellington, the Whanganui women’s team finished third overall, the masters team won the social cup, and the open men’s team made the division 2 cup final.

Whanganui Marist president Russell Eades said it was special for Whanganui to host the competition after a period of instability during the early 2000s.

“I attended this tournament for the first time in 1990, which is years and years ago,” Eades said.

“For various reasons, the club declined and grew in numbers so we weren’t able to attend until 2015 – and for things like this to continue on, you need to have the support of all the clubs to put their hand up and take turns at hosting.”

Eades hoped for a smooth-sailing weekend of action and to have the ability to experiment.

“We want to get through the event without any major hiccoughs. With the pools having an odd number of teams, it may give us the opportunity to amend things on the second day,” he said.

While he was looking forward to the event, Eades said organising what he described as the biggest event his club had been involved in had been difficult at times.

“As you get closer, the time pressures kick in but we have managed to get everything sorted out, we’ve just got to get everything into place [Friday] and roll on Saturday morning.”

The tournament starts at 8.30am on Saturday, September 20.

Fin Ocheduszko Brown is a multimedia journalist based in Whanganui.