Changes are afoot in women’s futsal, as the Women’s Futsal SuperLeague is set to move and expand for the 2021 season.

The competition will now mirror the Men’s Futsal SuperLeague as a full series-based double round robin: Northern and Southern Home Series, Northern and Southern Travel Series, National Series 1 and National Series 2 (which includes semi-finals and a grand final).

Southern United will enter a team into the Women’s Futsal SuperLeague for the first time while an additional Auckland Football Federation team will take the competition to eight teams, meaning the competition represents every federation for the first time since it started in 2015.

The timing of the competition will move from February 2021, as previously advertised to take place, to September–November 2021. Specific dates for individual series weekends are still to be confirmed.

Keegan McCauley, futsal competition manager, said:

“New Zealand Football had been exploring the possibility of expanding the Women’s Futsal SuperLeague for 2021 to align it with the Men’s Futsal SuperLeague.

“For this to happen cost equalisation and a format change was to enable all seven federations to take part. To ensure the series format would work, we also needed to find an additional team - hence the second Auckland team.

“This ultimately offers further opportunities for our best female futsal players to play at the highest level.”

The Northern teams taking part in the 2021 Women’s Futsal SuperLeague series are Northern Lights, Auckland Football Federation x2 and WaiBOP Football Federation. The Southern teams are Central Futsal, Capital Football, Canterbury United Pride and Southern United.

The Northern Lights were the inaugural winners in 2015. Auckland Football have won the most SuperLeagues, becoming the first team to be named champions more than once after winning in 2020 (they won their first in 2018). Canterbury United Pride were 2019 champions, Central-Manawatu the 2016 winners, and invitational Australian team Bayside Pirates took out the 2017 edition of the competition.

Article added: Thursday 03 December 2020