Huge turnaround for Southern United

A year is a long time in sport. Southern United is in a much rosier position than it was 12 months ago. Football writer Jeff Cheshire looks at the change in fortunes  and what has caused it.

Christmas will be much merrier for all four of Southern United’s teams this year.

One week out from the holiday break,  things could not be more different than they were 12 months ago.

The club has locked away a national futsal title, made the national women’s league playoffs, remains among the contenders in the men’s premiership and has seen growth in its youth team.

Compare that to a year ago. The men and women had earned one point between them in 14 games, the futsal team was tripped up in the semifinals and the youth team had lost two more games than this year.

The turnaround is something Football South chief executive Chris Wright said had come as a result of hard work and trying to progressively improve.

Having taken over the club last year, Football South had been working on making changes over time as it did not possess the budget to make big changes.

"I think we were doing a lot of the things we’re doing this year last year and certainly they came through as the season went on last year," he said.

"But we’ve continued that development and you’re also seeing the fruit that those changes we made last year are starting to bear.

"Obviously, we didn’t have a lot of heads-up last year, in particular in taking on the senior [men’s] and youth teams.

"It was really just about doing what we could to get through, while trying to create the best environment possible.

"For sure, it’s taken another step up this year, but it is about progressive development, too."

He felt the coaching across all the teams was exceptional, both in the head coaches and their assistants.

He also said in the case of the men’s team many of the best players within the region were now playing, whereas last year they had not.

In Tom Connor and Jared Grove it had secured two key local players, while Tim McLennan had come back on board last week.

That was to go with the likes of Andrew Ridden and Michael Hogan, who had been involved last season and were continuing to develop.

He hoped to continue growing the environment at the club, using its coaching, access to tertiary education and living conditions in Dunedin as selling points.

That included to players within the region, with the goal being to maximise the number of national league and national team-level players being developed locally.

Having a strong and exciting Southern United team would help with that.

While he was unsure if there was a direct correlation, the game continued to grow with 9000 club football players and 7500 futsal players in the federation. The federation is from South Canterbury south.

Football-wise that was a 5% increase on last year and 85% increase from six years ago.

For futsal it was a huge rise. The sport had only 12 teams a decade ago, and more than 1000 this year.

The other development in the sport was the artificial turf at Logan Park, which was likely to begin construction in the first half of this year.