10-man Auckland City triumph in five-goal National League final thriller

At Mount Smart Stadium, Auckland City 3 (Liam Gillion 33’, Gerard Garriga 40’, Angus Kilkolly 87’) Wellington Olympic 2 (Tor Davenport-Petersen 77’, Ben Mata pen-90+1’). HT: 2-0

Auckland City have won their fourth trophy of the domestic football season after overcoming a first-half sending off in the National League Championship final to claim an historic quadruple.

Goals from Liam Gillion, Gerard Garriga and Angus Kilkolly gave City a thrilling 3-2 win against Wellington Olympic in their 43rd and final game of 2022, having won every competition they entered: the National League, the Northern League, the Chatham Cup and the Oceania Champions League.

City raced out to a 2-0 lead after Gillion and Garriga scored in quick succession late in the first half. However, Albert Riera’s side had to play the entire second half with only 10 men after defender Reid Drake was given his marching orders for a last-man challenge on Jack-Henry Sinclair right before halftime.

Referee Calvin Berg originally issued Drake a yellow card but with Sinclair through on goal, he upgraded it to a red card following a conversion with assistant referee Nick Waldron.

With a numerical advantage, Olympic dominated the early stages of the second half, but it took until the 77th minute for them to make a breakthrough, Tor Davenport-Petersen scoring a thunderbolt from the edge of the penalty area.

They had a goal disallowed following a marginal offside call after Kailan Gould was judged to have interfered with the play before Sam Brotherton turned the ball into his own net, while Conor Tracey made two pointblank saves to deny Ben Mata and Jesse Randall as Olympic peppered the City goal.

But as they pushed for a second, City caught them on the counter. Kilkolly had the game won when he slotted the ball past Scott Basalaj in the 87th minute, though Olympic did cut the deficit back to one when Mata converted a late penalty.

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