Three clubs celebrate 10 year milestone
There aren’t many teams that know the Kanga Cup better than Adelaide City, Belwest Foxes and Majura.
This year the three clubs will celebrate 10 consecutive years in the Kanga Cup – with at least one team from each club involved every year since 1999.
Yesterday, two of the clubs marked the start of their 10th campaign against each other in the Under-14 Boys Cup at the University of Canberra.
Adelaide City ran out 9-0 winners thanks to a six-goal second-half, but both the Foxes and Adelaide City said just the chance to play new opposition was a great learning curve and that’s why they both kept coming back.
“Having a tournament of this calibre is great,” Belwest coach Fab Fiorese said.
“The team will come away learning more playing against some of these clubs from interstate.”
“It’s the exposure to interstate and international sides because you’ll find generally a lot of the kids probably don’t get to play with the [Capital Football] Academy or the ACT Academy of Sport.”
“It’s fabulous what we’ve ended up in a pool where we play only interstate sides rather than playing local sides which is great for us.”
Adelaide City head coach Elmar Schaffeler said the Kanga Cup had helped generations of South Australian players improve.
“Every time we come [to Canberra] for the week, we see them grow up and they’re a different team when they go back to Adelaide,” Schaffeler said.
“Our club puts a lot of emphasis on developing players . . . we see that [the Kanga Cup] helps develop not only their skills but also develop as people because they learn to work as a team.”
“It’s the experience of being away for a week, the boys having a chance to play at a tournament by themselves without parents telling them what to do so it’s terrific for the boys to get away and play as a team.”
The third team, Majura, has celebrated its 10th anniversary by fielding the most teams (nine) in its Kanga Cup history.