Quarter Century of Federation Structure
By Gavin Searle
This coming season marks a quarter century of the move to the Federation Structure of running football locally and throughout New Zealand. The change saw the end of the 23 local Football Association’s (FAs), local with a similar number of Women’s and Junior FA’s – with each club having delegates on the FA’s, with the seven Federations created.
The changes came about at a similar time as other sporting codes were being advised by central funding bodies that to grow the codes there was need to switch to a more streamlined governance model with board structure, with each Federation to have more say it what was happening on a day-to-day bases rather than ‘head office’ dictating. ‘Road Shows’ were held within each Football Association to explain the proposed change and allow for feedback. Some of the strongest feedback giving was that two federations were needed in the South Island, when the original proposal was for only one.
At the same time clubs were questioning the finance that the then Soccer New Zealand were running, which was a four-year cycle around qualifying campaigns for World Cup campaigns with budget blowouts leading to the national body to impose ‘one-off levies’ on all players, including juniors to cover the blowouts.
So time was ripe for change, with FA’s voting to end their existing and create the Federation’s, with the Canterbury FA, (known at the time as Soccer Canterbury) seconding the motion to make the change to the new Federation’s so Federation 6 or to give it its official name No 6 District Federation of New Zealand Football Incorporated came into being, with the moniker of Mainland Football coming into being in the early 2000’s. With the change of structure, it also saw the formal use of the term football, replacing the term soccer.
Terry Mann was the first chairman of Federation 6, recalls the change, “The new structure was not perfect, but it was better than what we had, so for the sake of the game it had to happen”, stated Mann. One of the immediate issues the new board had to deal with was that clubs based in the former Nelson and Marlborough FA’s were included in the Federation 6 when they were formally part of competitions in the old Central League, with clubs in the former South Canterbury FA now part of Federation 7, know originally as Football South, now Southern Football.
This meant a delegation was sent to Nelson and Blenheim to meet with clubs to ensure the competition's structures were in place for the coming season, that meant the senior side from both Nelson Suburbs and Marlborough United travelled south to play in the men’s competition.
Staff also had to be appointed, with Terry Blacktopp, the former Operations Manager at Soccer Canterbury, taking over as the General Manager of the Federation with Fred Simpson appointed as the first Coaching Director. This was the first time that coaching staff were recruited locally as under the previous model all coaching staff in the regions were appointed by the Director of Coaching at Soccer New Zealand.
In the first year of the change over, the Federation was working out of temporary accommodation located in a Council yard on Westminster Street as English Park was being upgraded, including the realignment of the pitch along with the new grandstand and office block.
Blacktopp stayed in the role until 2004 and is now based in Queensland, said it was “very much business as usual” for the new season with changes planned for the coming two seasons. This included raising the profile of the women’s side of the code, which led to games being played on Saturday, after most had been played on Sunday.
Again, to lift the profile of the women’s game the foundations were laid for the introduction of the Pride, who had their first outing in the National Youth League in 2002. The Canterbury United model also had to be developed, in conjunction with the clubs, with the revamped Men’s National League also kicking off the same year.
Another change introduced was to have a combined Awards Evening at the end of the season, up until this point, the Men’s and Women’s Awards were held as separate events.
Blacktopp was also kept busy making arrangements for the various Federation Youth tournaments that commenced, “Thankfully we were well supported by the Trusts that helped with funding for the new kits and equipment, with Fred involved in appointing coaches. The travel arrangements were a major logistic exercise, but it all fell into place by the time the first tournaments rolled around."
Simpson can remember the board asked him to look at the coaching structure and collaborating with the clubs to the introduction for Premier League down the grades to raise standards on and off the park. Other issues worked over the number of years were seeing the Premier School competition moved from Saturday to midweek to allow players to play for both club and school.
Coaching programs were established with other initiatives to follow, such as Football in Schools - seeing thousands of children being introduced to football, and more recently Walking Football, Street Football, with Futsal also becoming a big part of the football scene, with numbers exploding over the past 25 years.
Article added: Friday 21 February 2025