SAMURAI FC
Youth
At the heart of our community lie our coaching and volunteer staff, who are a mix of locally grown Japanese high school/university students, and those from Japan studying abroad and on a working holiday visa. We also are a football community too where we play football together and participate in leagues and tournaments. Below are some of our history.
October 2024
Ethnic Football Tournament 2024
Following our results from the last two ethnic tournaments from 2022 and 2023, we aimed to improve our placing from top 8. The team began training from August leading up to the tournament, which was held on the 19th and 20th of October. We finished first in our pool on our first day like the previous two years, winning 1-0, 7-0, and 4-2. We kicked off the second day with a won against Serbia 6-0, but unfortunately lost to the defending champions Somali Stars 2-1. We failed to reach the semi finals two years in a row, both times against an African team. We hope to be back next year to finally lift the trophy!
Dec 2023
Ethnic Football Festival Hamilton 2023
After the disappointing ending to the 2022 tournament, we looked to take the title back home in 2023. We had a fantastic first day coming out of the pool first, and even taking a win for the second day morning game. However, we were defeated by the DR Congo team who ended up coming runners-up in the tournament. Although we could not become champions, we progressed further than in 2022, so hopefully we can improve every year to bring home the title in the future. In the cultural parade, we also added some anime characters to have a cosplay for each person which was very enjoyable.
Nov 2023
Friendly vs Etihad FC
As a new annual event, we played Etihad FC from the Afghanistan football community, of which some players were in the Afghanistan squad from 2016. A lot of the junior community came down to English Park to support us and we managed to secure a 4-1 win. It was the first time the children watched the coaches play and hopefully, they can aspire to grow above and beyond us!
Oct 2022
Ethnic Football Festival Hamilton 2022
Our first-ever participation in the biggest Ethnic Football tournament in NZ. The team had 15 players from Christchurch, Auckland and Hamilton, ranging from 16 to 30 years old. We came out on top of the pool on the first day, but unfortunately, the second day was cancelled due to rain. We also celebrated our culture by wearing anime cosplay and Yukata in the cultural parade, receiving the Philip Yeung Ambassador Award for our contribution to the tournament.
Dec 2021
Coach training for Samurai Clinic
Before our first ever Samurai Clinic in Dec 2021, all the coaches who were a part of the Samurai Sevens 2020 team came together to be trained. This was the start of the currently ongoing journey of Samurai Soccer Clinic!
Oct 2021-Dec 2021:
Samurai Sevens 2nd Season
In our second campaign of the Mainland Summer 7’s league, we had a lot of new players come in, with many of the 2020 players busy with NCEA Level 3 exam preparation. This season we dominated the league, making it to the final, but unfortunately missed the title in a narrow defeat in the final.
Oct 2021
Tariq Omar Memorial Cup
Samurai FC Youth had their first campaign in this one day 5 a-side tournament. We made it to the final again, but unfortunately lost to the Afghanistan team for a 2nd place finish.
Sep 2021
Samurai FC Kicks Off
From 2020’s Samurai Sevens core members, Keisuke, Jun, Lucas and Kosei, came together to discuss what the next steps could be for us and the wider community. We came to the conclusion that we would like to create connections between the youth and junior community through football as the medium, and Samurai FC was created.
Jan 2021
Friendly vs Afghanistan, vs Fiji
We played an 11vs11 friendly match against the Afghanistan and Fiji community we played against in 2016, winning 3-0, 15-2 respectively. It was a fantastic day celebrating the growth of the community and interacting with other ethnic communities.
Oct-Dec 2020
Samurai Sevens
After COVID-19, we had a regathering of our youth community as we participated in the Mainland Football Summer 7’s league and claimed an undefeated championship title. It was a dominant performance with new and old players playing at the highest level in high school too.
Dec 2020
Samurai Sevens Camp
During the summer holidays after taking the championship title, the Samurai Sevens members went out to Spencer Park for a 1 night 2 day camp where we split off into Team East and West, competing in multiple events such as volleyball, board games, Jinro, football, and kick baseball. We also held our season prizegiving where Jun was awarded the season MVP.
2016
Extended Kiwi Samurai Blue
The Samurai team participated in a three-way Ethnic football tournament with Afghanistan and Fiji where the community extended out to over 20 players. We beat Fiji and won against Afghanistan by default as they had ineligible players, giving us the championship for the tournament.
2013/14
Formation of Kiwi Samurai Blue
This was the first team that was created and participated in the U10 Action Indoor Sports Indoor Football League. In this team are current and past coaches, Jake, Sena and the current Samurai FC Youth Leader, Kosei. This was the base of the Japanese football community that expanded from here.
And so much more to come...
Check out the Upcoming events page for the latest information!