A squad of twelve New Zealanders aged fifty and over will walk onto a pitch in Brisbane on 28 May as the country’s first official walking football side at a world championships, lining up against England in the opening fixture of the International Walking Football Federation tournament at Perry Park.
The event runs from 28 to 31 May and is the first time the IWFF World Championships have been staged in the Southern Hemisphere, with games hosted by the Brisbane Roar at the inner-city ground that doubles as their training base. New Zealand is in the men’s 50 plus division, the largest of the bracketed competitions, and will play Australia in its second pool fixture, in what shapes as the most-watched match of the trip for the touring Kiwi party.
The team is coached and managed by Neil Haines, a former All White who earned a cap in a 2-0 win over Singapore on 1 October 1978 and who played senior club football for North Shore United, according to his Wikipedia entry. Haines came across walking football a couple of years ago, chairs the local trust that has been promoting the format on the North Shore, and is the public face of an organising group that has built the sport from a single gala day at North Shore United into regular twice-weekly sessions with 20 to 30 players turning out on summer evenings.
Getting to a world championships within that timeframe is no small thing for a code that did not officially exist in New Zealand five years ago. RNZ reports the Kiwi squad of twelve only began training together as a national side about three weeks ago, initially gathering on Sundays and now stepping up to twice-weekly sessions in the run-up to departure for Brisbane.
Walking football is exactly what it sounds like. A six-a-side version of the game played on a smaller field, with rolling substitutions and one cardinal rule. Running is forbidden. Players who break into a jog or sprint give away a free kick, and competitive matches use referees who police the rule strictly. The pace is slower, contact is minimised and the emphasis is on touch, positioning and decision-making, which is why so many former club footballers have taken to it. The format is designed to keep older players in the game when their knees, hips or backs would otherwise have ended things, and to give complete newcomers a low-impact way to start.
Haines is realistic about the level the New Zealanders will face in Brisbane. European nations have been playing the format competitively for more than a decade, with formal pathways run by England Football, Spain, Italy and Portugal feeding national squads that train year-round. Australia has poured resources into the build-up to a home tournament, and several of the European sides arrive with players who have appeared at multiple world events.
“We’re looking forward to it! And then, we play Australia,” Haines told RNZ. “The best part of it, we will give them a run for their money.”
The growth of the game in New Zealand has been quietly organic. What began as a single Saturday morning gala at the North Shore United ground in Auckland has spread to Auckland Central, Petone in Wellington, and a string of smaller regional sessions listed on the Walking Football New Zealand site. Most clubs have a mix of former representative players, social club footballers, and people who are picking up a ball for the first time in their adult lives. Some sessions are mixed, some are women only, and the unifying feature is that everyone on the field is old enough to remember the All Whites at the 1982 World Cup.
That demographic point matters. New Zealand Football has spent the past decade pushing development at junior level and through the women’s game, with the senior men preparing for their first World Cup since 1982. The over-50s have largely been left to find their own way back into the game, and walking football fills that gap. It gives former players a way to keep turning up at the club without putting their bodies through another season of full-pace football, and gives complete newcomers a route in.
The Brisbane tournament is also the start of a competitive thread for New Zealand in a format that already has its own qualifying pathways, federations and rankings. The IWFF is the international umbrella body for the format, and Brisbane will be New Zealand’s first appearance at one of its tournaments. Walking Football New Zealand is using the trip as much for connection-building as for results, with the longer term aim of fielding multiple New Zealand sides at future events, including a women’s 50 plus team and a men’s 60 plus team.
For the twelve heading to Brisbane, the brief is straightforward. Compete, learn, enjoy, and come home with stories. And, if Haines has his way, send Australia home with a little something to think about.
Have you played walking football, or do you know someone who has picked the game up after their full-pace playing days finished? Leave a comment below and let us know how you have found it.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job π
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