The Bluebird Premier League title race was blown wide open on August 1, as Blockhouse Bay inflicted a 3-0 defeat upon the defending champions, Feltonmix Metro, at Albie Turner Field.
Given the restective levels of desire shown by both sides, the result wasn’t a surprise. Bay were far hungrier than their opponents, but their performance was what raised the eyebrows most, given the lacklustre display the visitors had turned in five days previously, when entertaining Papatoetoe.
Bay started the better of the two, but Metro had the first chance, Steve Nickson seeing his glancing header off a Willie Thompson cross somehow kept out by Triss Clark.. Danny McHenery drilled the loose ball across the face of the goal and past the target.
Hamish Carmody appeared to be felled by Wayne Roach as he entered the penalty area in the seventh minute, having burst past Shaun O’Mara. Referee Craig Borland ignored all pleas for a penalty, but Bay didn’t require a spot-kick to win this match.
Instead it was a process of relentless pursuit which ground down Metro. Bay chased everything that moved - if the flag off the corner post had been blown away, I swear they’d have raced after that as well!! Tackles were hard and uncompromising in this local derby, but it was constantly pressurising the ball carrier which created the mistakes from which Bay were to profit.
Kayne Lynch, twice, and James Stewart both went close for the visitors before, in the 39th minute, Craig “Sniffer” Smith, Bay’s chief pursuant of seemingly lost causes, earned the reward his performance merited when slipping home a rebound following Roach’s save of a subtle Stewart back-heel, this after good work on the left by Jason Root and the well-performed Lynch.
Stewart missed a golden chance to extend Bay’s lead over a rather ordinary-looking Metro team before the break, while Roach saved at his feet nine minutes into the second spell, by which time the home team had begun to press for an equaliser.
Stuart Mair, McHenery, John Van Dort - a glorious diving header, and Stu Roberts all went close during this time, but two goals in ten minutes killed the game off as a contest.
Carmody netted them both, the first in the 65th minute. He took full advantage of the open spaces Metro left behind them to race through on to a heft clearance. On he sprinted, scything past O’Mara as if the defender didn’t exist! Roach was beaten next, not by a striker running past him at breakneck speed but by a venomous drive which arrowed into the bottom corner of the net from the penalty area.
2-0 became 3-0 fifteen minutes from time, with Root again finding access on the left. His cross picked out John Stewart, whose shot was quite wayward. But Carmody’s deft glancing header diverted the ball past the bemused Roach and in by the post to complete the scoring.
Metro’s were completely dashed by Willie Thompson’s early exit three minutes later, his first red card in eleven years. And while Carmody twice more went close for Bay, and Clark denied Roberts, Nickson and McHenery at the death, 3-0 it remained - Metro’s first loss at home in exactly two years. Who would have thought it?

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