General News
10 August, 2024
Locals defend Kanga Cup title!
Five soccer players from Gilgandra represented their town and the Dubbo Devils Football Association when they competed at the Kanga Cup in Canberra recently.
The tournament was held from July 8 to 12 and more than 300 teams competed. Four girls from Gilgandra’s St Joseph’s School and one from Gilgandra High School competed.
Katie Colwell and Regan Godber competed last year at Kanga Cup, and this year they won their division again, making them back-to-back under-10 champions. They played eight games during the week, culminating in a 3-2 win against Lindfield FC in the U10s female plate final, where the Devils’ Lucy Walker was named as the most valuable player.
Heidi Colwell and Isabelle Peart competed in the U12 plate, where the girls finished equal first in their pool but were knocked out on a goal difference by just one. These girls played five games before being eliminated. Heidi and Isabelle did, however, win the U12 Western Youth League competition earlier in the year.
To continue the Gilgandra representation, Jacqui Hutchison competed in the U16 girls competition and Rhynn Hutchison refereed during the tournament.
The Kanga Cup is Australia’s “number one football festival” and has its own dedicated website. It is the largest international youth football tournament in the southern hemisphere. “Held annually each July in Canberra, Australia, the week-long event proudly champions the mission of uniting the youth of the world through football,” the website states. The Kanga Cup is run by Capital Football, the governing body for football (soccer) in the Australian Capital Territory.
This event started in Sydney in 1991 with 35 teams but has expanded to the point where almost 5000 players attend to compete in age divisions for boys and girls from Dubbo and District Devils Football Association (FA) returned to the Kanga Cup in 2024 with their largest ever cohort of squads, ahead of a highly anticipated tournament in Australia’s capital.
It’s an area that coach and Western Youth League coordinator Matt Stonestreet says is very much into their local football. “[It’s] a big population, we feed with regional areas as well, towns that come into the Dubbo football association,” Stonestreet told Sam Watson in an article published on the Kanga Cup website.
Off the back of their first Kanga Cup victory in 2023, the coach says that his group’s achievements inspired the increase in Dubbo squads to enter this year’s edition. “Yeah, the U10 girls took out theirs last year, and I think that publicity we’ve put back through the sport at home got a few other coaches excited about the prospect of it,” he said. “So the U10 girls and the U11 boys have come back this year and then we’ve brought six other teams with us.”
