Toll Stadium final a first

Dave AlabasterFootball makes its first major appearance at Northland's newly revamped events centre at Okara Park on Saturday.
The first senior club football final to be played at Toll Stadium will feature Kerikeri Football Club against West Auckland club Oratia United in the US1 Federation Cup final.
The final will be held in conjunction with a weekend of football at the stadium. The U17 Youth Challenge tournament, featuring teams from Northland and Auckland, will be played at the adjacent Old Boys Ground and the stadium on Saturday and Sunday, with the annual junior and senior Northland prizegiving also held at the stadium on Saturday.
Kerikeri are looking forward to winning some silverware in their final match of the season and the club has raised thousands of dollars to transport the team and their supporters down to Whangarei for the occasion.
The club has a good record in knockout competitions, most famously reaching the quarter-finals of the Chatham Cup in 2004 - the best result any Northland club has achieved in the national knockout competition.
"We had a great run that year and although we got well beaten by Eastern Suburbs, there was about 500-600 people watching the match on the sidelines," Kerikeri's Colin Taylor said.
The club has been one of the best performing in the Northland competition in recent years, winning two trebles in the past decade. But for the past two years league success has passed them by and they have been runners-up in the Northland premier grade competition.
Kamo won last year and Onerahi this season, giving Kerikeri extra motivation to win on Saturday after they were knocked out of the Stafford-Choat by Kamo on Saturday.
Taylor is expecting the final to be close.
"Theoretically Oratia are two leagues above us, but they're bottom of their league so it should be close in the final," he said. Kerikeri have beaten some good sides in the competition, including Te Atatu in a penalty shootout, Waitakere Vitor 3-2 and Birkenhead Boston 4-0 at home in the semifinal.
The side has a good mixture of youth and experience with Zdenek Rosa and skipper Kieran Nagel controlling the defence. Mark Coleman and Martin Brooks have been standouts in the midfield with striker Dwayne Beazley scoring some important goals during the season and Sam Green another standout.
United Soccer 1 Northland development officer Dave Alabaster said the original plan was to play the Stafford-Choat final at the ground but that became impossible with scheduling problems delaying the final until next weekend.
"Because of that we decided to play the Federation Cup final here which is probably bigger than the Stafford-Choat anyway, with all the Auckland teams involved," he said.
Alabaster said he was looking forward to a big day at the events centre. "We trialed the park with the U15s and U17s a few weeks ago, but this is the first time we've held anything major there before and if it goes well then we hope to use it again," he said.
The Northland junior prizegiving is at 12.30pm, with the Federation Cup Final between Kerikeri and Oratia kicking off at 2pm, followed by the Northland senior prizegiving.