For the first time in the town’s history, rugby-mad Omakau is fielding a football team, thanks to a proactive parent who decided to put a school team together.
Kyle Hinton told 1News: “I was going for an under-7s team, and I thought I might have struggled to get it.”
Hinton thought he’d get “maybe three or four” players when putting together the team but he managed to muster up 12 football fanatics.
The team of youngsters, boys and girls, are now playing every week in the Otago town with a population fewer than 1,000.
The ground-breaking team is getting the support of Southern Football whose head of development, Jess Ibrom, said:
“These children out in these rural areas perhaps don’t sometimes get the opportunity that the kids get closer to big cities.
“Kids want to play different sports. They all don’t want to play rugby so if we can support that as well that’s good for everyone.”
Coach Hinton’s next plan? To set up Omakau’s first football club …
Watch 1News story
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