The rise of Auckland FC - New Zealand’s whirlwind sporting start-up

Saturday, 12 October 2024

Majority owner Bill Foley’s mantra of “always advance, never retreat’’ has been driving New Zealand’s new A-League football club as Auckland FC nears their eagerly-awaited first game.

That policy was highlighted on Friday when Auckland FC added Kiwi NBA basketball star Steven Adams to an ownership group led by Foley, the American business tycoon backer of English Premier League club Bournemouth.

Adams joins former All Black Ali Williams and his partner Anna Mowbray and ex-All Whites Noah Hickey and Tim Brown - owner of the successful Allbirds shoe company - in Auckland FC’s investment team.

It’s a heavyweight board room for a club which has yet to take the field, but which is expecting over 20,000 for its maiden A-League Men game against Brisbane Roar at Auckland’s Go Media Mt Smart Stadium next Saturday.

Before kicking a ball in earnest, Auckland FC has already “really galvanised New Zealand football’’, claims club chief executive Nick Becker.

Aotearoa had only one professional club - the long-established Wellington Phoenix - until Auckland FC’s advent just 11 months ago. Now the country will have a derby, with the two clubs meeting for the first time at Wellington in the third round on November 2.

Becker was “employee one’’ last November when the Foley-led franchise got the nod for a new A-League licence. Chief commercial officer Mike Higgins was “employee two’’ and director of football Terry McFlynn (a former Northern Ireland international) became “employee three’’.

“Then we appointed Steve Corica as our head coach and started to build our football department from there,’’ Becker told The Post a week out from the season opener against Brisbane Roar.

Becker said “the last nine months have gone by in an absolute flash’’, but the nascent club had quickly defined “who we are”.

“When we named ourselves Auckland FC it was very intentional. We wanted to represent all of Auckland city and New Zealand as well. We want to be a proud New Zealand team alongside the Phoenix.”

Four key values underpin the club, Becker says.

“We wanted to very much embed ourselves in the community, not just the football community but the whole of Auckland.”

Becker said Auckland FC soon saw the potential in a city of 1.6 million people where “the rise in popularity of football over the past 10 years has been spectacular’’.

Ambition was another core value, he said. “We want to win, we’re not here to make up numbers. That comes very much from Bill Foley, who’s obviously a very successful businessman but also very successful with his other professional sporting teams he has around the world.” Foley also owns French football club FC LOrient, is part-owner of Hibernian in Scotland’s Premier League and bankrolls the Vegas Golden Knights National Ice Hockey franchise.

Foley - who will be at Mt Smart for the birth of his new start-up - has “this great sporting network and IP” that Auckland FC can tap into, Becker said.

“Bill has a saying across his businesses and sporting clubs - always advance, never retreat. We want to be competitive on and off the pitch right from day one.”

Corica - a former Socceroo and an A-League champion as a player and a manager - is equally “ambitious’’.

“We want to win as many games as possible and we’ll see where that takes us,’’ he said this week. “It’s been a long time since we’ve had a team in Auckland [since the New Zealand Knights (2004-07]. We want to really put on a good show for the Auckland fans, especially in that first game. Everyone’s very excited about us coming into the league as well, but we want to make sure that we’re ready for it and get the win.”

Another Auckland FC goal is to provide “genuine player pathways for talented Kiwi boys and girls’’ to go from “their local club here in Auckland, into our A-League environment, to be really good here as champions of New Zealand and Australia and then go on to succeed in the bigger overseas leagues we are directly connected into”.

Becker said the club has 18 Kiwi players - “13 from Auckland or with close connections to the city’’. Among them are All Whites goalkeeper Alex Paulsen, who returns to his home town on loan from Bournemouth after leaving Auckland to star at the Phoenix.

Seven of Auckland FC’s eight scholarship players are from the city and Becker said getting one of Auckland’s most famous footballers, Danny Hay, as Corica’s assistant coach was “a massive coup for us’’. Hay, a former All Whites defender and coach, “knows a lot about youth football in this country; he’s second to none in that regard”.

Becker said the club’s fourth value was a desire to “entertain Auckland’’. “New Zealand, as a whole, has been through too many tough times. We found we’re a good news story for people to get excited about and getround.

“Auckland’s a fantastically diverse city, 43% of the population was born overseas and often the game of football connects all those different nationalities. We’ve worked hard on how we create an exciting and entertaining match-day project.’’

That will include a family fan zone “next to the pitch’’, a “cultural boot party’’ space in the top west carpark, with a sound system and barbecue and an entertainment zone for “hard core fans’’, who “call themselves The Port’’.

Becker said Auckland FC personnel had watched some Warriors NRL games and noted “how they connect with their fan base is really impressive. If you create those emotional connections, if you put on a good show off the pitch as well as on it, people are going to come, even if your form’s a bit off. The Warriors this season are proof of that, and we’d love to get to that position.”

Playing at Mt Smart may also be a masterstroke for Auckland FC as it connects the new club to the home base for New Zealand football’s breakthrough 1982 World Cup qualifying campaign.

“A lot of people have said to me it is the home of football in New Zealand, although obviously there’s been some big games down in Wellington, as well.

“But Go Media Stadium is a natural rectangular stadium which is really important to us, we want our fans to be close to the action.”

As for the rivalry with the Wellington Phoenix, Becker is “all up for a bit of friendly banter’’ and believes having derbies will be a positive for New Zealand football.

“The great thing about football is how tribal it gets, sometimes it does cross that line, but I’d argue that Kiwis are pretty good at controlling themselves in that sense. There is plenty of friendly banter, there might be a bit of spice, but I can’t see it spilling over into any ugly.

“The two clubs get on really well off the pitch. I think that’s important for the fans to see how we behave and hopefully that will set the precedent for how they do as well.”

As first-game fever builds, part-owner Ali Williams has found it infectious. A ten-year All Black who won 77 test caps, Williams was a first XI goalkeeper in Auckland in his youth.

But Becker says the ex-lock has “definitely got back into football” and has “brought a lot of energy’’ to Auckland FC. “I won’t speak as to whether he still watches rugby or not, but all he speaks to me and the players about is football. I haven’t really heard him talk much about rugby at all.”