NZ Secondary Schools Football tour to Australia
By Sam Drake and Jonathan Tucker | Posted: Thursday May 2, 2024
During the holidays, Sam Drake and Jonathan Tucker travelled to Sydney as part of the New Zealand Secondary Schools U16 Football team.
From the 9th to the 18th of April, I was fortunate enough to be a part of the New Zealand Secondary Schools U16 Football Team that played 4 games in Sydney. This was a fantastic experience that enabled me to experience a high level of football skills in world class facilities.
We started the tour well with a 1-0 win over Hills United. After this, our results went downhill with a 4-2 loss to Combined High Schools NSW, and an unlucky 1-0 loss to the Sutherland Sharks.
The highlight of the tour was the final game against the U16 Australian Secondary Schools side. Indications were that the Australian side were highly skilled and would be a significant challenge for our team. After lining up for the national anthems the game started at pace, and we were under pressure for the majority of the game. Despite creating several goal scoring opportunities, we ended the game scoreless but conceding three goals. Not the best result but it was still a respectable completion to the tour.
Thanks to the OBHS Football Club and The OBHS Old Boys' Foundation for their support.
Sam Drake
Being selected for the U19 New Zealand Secondary Schools team to tour Sydney in April and play football in a different environment was amazing.
After arriving in Sydney, we departed on a long bus ride to Valentines Sports Park. The home and heart of football in NSW and a special basecamp and facilities dedicated to only football. This would be our home for the first week of the tour. Valentines Sports Park had everything that we would need for our time there on site and everything in walking distance. It had multiple quality astro turf and grass pitches with changing rooms, physio rooms, ice baths and everything a football player would ever need as well as a pool, recovery spaces, conference rooms where we would have buffet meals and accommodation with our rooms only metres away from all of it. It was amazing to be able to experience the lifestyle like that of a footballer in an academy that would have a similar schedule to what we did.
The days consisted of either training sessions in the morning or afternoon as well as recovery sessions and the rest of the day resting for the upcoming games. While staying at Valentine Sports Park we played both Hills United FC and Radford College both teams that compete in the national premier league in Australia which is only one level below Australia's professional A League and coming away from both games with convincing wins gave us positive momentum to go forward into the next games.
In our extra time and rest days we were fortunate enough to watch the Sydney FC and Western Sydney Wanderers game live at the incredible Allianz Stadium. We had a tour and visit of Sydney FC home base and training facilities and listened to a talk from the U20 head coach about what life as a professional player looks like there.
After our time at Valentine Sports Park, we then transferred again to Cronulla, a very beautiful beachside town where we spent the last 4 days of our tour. We continued our daily training sessions and building up for the last two games that we had ahead of us. The third game was against the Sutherland Sharks another national premier league team in which we managed to pick up another dominating victory. The last game of the tour was against the Australian U19 National Secondary Schools team made up of the best high schooling football prospects from across the entire country which the previous three games were all working up to this last game which would be a very tough match. The Australian school boys’ game was a very tough battle played in front of a full stadium and many A league scouts from across the country.
The level and standard of football they brought to the table was incredible. It was an amazing experience to be able to play against and compete at a level well above that in New Zealand. It was a very close game but, in the end, the Australian school boys narrowly won the game concluding our tour in Sydney.
It was an amazing experience and an honour to be able to represent New Zealand and play alongside some of the best high school footballers from across the country, and to come together with such an incredibly high level of skill and talent to be able to seriously perform against some of the best footballers of our age in Australia.
Jonathan Tucker
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