This Far North game's going global

A uniquely Far North football tradition is in the process of finding fame courtesy of Italy's best-known sports newspaper.

Every year since 1991 Italian-born football fanatic Stefano Virgili and his wife Lyndsey Johanson have hosted the world's first football game of the year at Kahoe Farms Hostel, their backpackers' lodge on State Highway 10 north of Kaeo.

The New Year's Eve tournament is played at the floodlit "Kahoe Stadium", from which the sheep and kunekune pigs have to be shooed before kickoff, with barefoot teams of four playing 12-minute games in a round robin. Games start early in the evening of December 31, with the final played at midnight.

The latest tournament was contested by six teams made up of hostel guests, friends and family, and was a typically international event with players from as far afield as Denmark, Holland, Italy, Germany, Portugal, England and Australia, as well as a strong contingent from Wellington.

While the tournament has become well-known among fans of the round-ball code in the Far North, its fame had spread little further - until now.

Stefano said he was contacted last week by La Gazzetta Dello Sport journalist Filippo Gambarini, whose father had heard about the event while on a Dune Rider bus tour to Cape Reinga. It just happened that the bus driver was an old player for Kaeo FC, the team Stefano used to coach.

Filippo Gambarini was intrigued by the tournament and its Italian connection, and has written a report which is due to be published soon in La Gazzetta, described by Stefano as an Italian icon, the country's first newspaper to feature nothing but sport, especially football.

"It's been my regular read for so many years. To be mentioned in there for football is a dream for me," he said.

Each tournament had had a star, he added, and this time it had been 22-year-old Danish player Anders Holvad, who had been on a football pilgrimage of sorts, following in the footsteps of his uncle Rasmus, who played the Kahoe Stadium 11 years earlier.

The young Dane carried his nation's flag in style, leading his team, the Vikings, to a 3-1 victory over the Champions of the Universe in the midnight final, thus claiming the Virgili Cup in the world's first game of football in 2013.