After six days of sunshine, rain and incredible football, the 2025 Emerging Socceroos Championships have come to a close.
The final day of action in Melbourne saw NNSWF’s under-16s fight to the final whistle.
The under-16s took the field for the final time when they went down 2-0 to Football South Australia.
Both teams came out fighting for fifth position, but it was Football South Australia who opened the scoring.
After a scrappy fight in front of the goal Football South Australia were able to slot the ball into the goal in the eighth minute.
They doubled their lead just four minutes later after they scored their second for the morning in the 12th minute.
Will Kauter made a fantastic goal line clearance to deny Football South Australia a third goal in the dying moments of the first half and NNSWF went into half-time down 2-0.
NNSWF came out firing in the second half as they pushed to close their tournament on a high note.
The moment appeared to have come when Al Faruqi Ginting crossed the ball to Harry Butcher at the top right of the box in the 53rd minute.
Butcher unleashed a powerful shot and forced Football South Australia to pull off a fantastic save.
Despite their best efforts the under-16s were unable to get their name on the scoreboard and closed the tournament with a 2-0 loss.
NNSWF’s under-16s came sixth, while the under-15s ended the tournament on day five coming 11th.
For other NNSWF products on the park, match officials Flynn Cope and Lucy Hungerford were appointed as assistant referees on the championship matches after an amazing tournament.
NNSWF Talent Development Officer Brett Angell believed the players should be proud of the hard work they have put in and looked towards next year.
“With the under-16s today I think they will be a little bit disappointed that they didn’t push South Australia a little bit closer,” Angell said.
“Credit to their keeper, I thought he pulled off two excellent stops in the second half to deny us goal scoring opportunities.
“I think there has been good learning experiences across the entire tournament for all our players.
“For the under-15s I believe if we defended better and scored more goals they would have potentially been in the same positions as the under-16s, but it wasn’t meant to be.
“The boys should be proud of what they did this week and for the under-15s I don’t think that finishing position resembles what they did this week.
“We’re looking at moving forward and continuing to improve ahead of next year.”
