Ethnic Football Festival 2007 celebrates communities and the beautiful game

24 January 2007

The Zimbabwe Warriors, The Black Lions from Ethiopia, The Undutchables from Holland and The Irish Rovers will be amongst 20 teams taking part in this year’s Ethnic Football Festival when it kicks off on Saturday, 3 February.

The festival, part of Christchurch City Council’s SummerTimes programme and now in its fourth year, was set up as the result of ethnic communities in Christchurch coming together in a bid to pursue their passion of the ‘beautiful game’ of football.

“Many approaches were made to Council about the possibility of setting up a tournament of this nature,” says Council Recreation Adviser Ken Howat.

“This festival helps ethnic communities, most of who play football all year round, to establish themselves and be more involved in the wider community. It is a great example of how recreation strengthens communities.”

Henock Wubie, a member of the Black Lions side, says his team is really looking forward to the tournament and have even had two friendly matches in preparation.

“We can’t wait to be part of the community soccer festival, we are very much looking forward to it,” he says.

“We’ve had two friendly games against the South Africans and the Afghanis – we’re pretty good!”

As well as all the top-class football, there will be a colourful opening ceremony on Friday 2 February at the Ngaio Marsh Theatre at the University of Canterbury and the Police Team will again take on the Ethnic All Stars before the tournament final.

The 2006 event attracted 4500 spectators – more than the New Zealand Knights did for their last game of the season – and received a highly commended award in last year’s New Zealand Recreation Association (NZRA) Outstanding Programme category.

Tournament programme:

Opening ceremony: Friday 2 February, 7-8.30pm, Nagio Marsh Theatre, University of Canterbury.

Preliminaries: Saturday 3 February and Sunday 4 February, 9.30am-5pm, Bexley Reserve, Pages Road.

Finals: Saturday 10 February, 10am-3pm, English Park, Cranford Street.

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