KEY POINTS:
They turn out for the soccer practice in jeans, shorts and boxers.
Some are young - an asylum seeker just arrived from Afghanistan, a fit young Maori/Jamaican "trying to be independent", a wiry guy with glasses who was kicked out of his last flat when his benefit stopped, and a tall, tousle-haired 34-year-old who takes Thursdays off work at what used to be called a sheltered workshop so he can play soccer.
There's Andrew Mangham, a slim, bearded 39-year-old poet on medication for schizophrenia:
Hail to the Queen
Welcome on the team
- of football, of course!
And there's an older group - a quiet man who stands rigidly at his post as goalkeeper, and a big, jovial 48-year-old who describes himself as just "down on my luck" after domestic problems.
This motley crew, shuffling gingerly on to a frosty field at Auckland's Cornwall Park early on Thursday, could be in line to represent New Zealand for the first time at a life-changing event - the Homeless World Cup.
"The idea is to publicise the issue of homelessness to the wider population and to use football as a catalyst for change for the individuals who are playing," says Stephen McLuckie, an Englishman who recently joined the former Methodist Mission in Queen St, now renamed Lifewise.
He has taken teams from Liverpool, with a coach from the famous Manchester United, to the past three Homeless World Cups in Edinburgh, Capetown and Copenhagen.
He and another English expat, Katie Owen in Wellington, are seeking sponsors through a new trust called Street Football Aotearoa to send the first Kiwi players to the next Homeless World Cup in Melbourne this December.
Working with the homeless, he says, has always had "a soup-kitchen ethos".
"We are trying to move away from that - giving people things to do to start moving away from homelessness. Football is just one of those activities.
"We are also looking to get different clubs going - a gardening project, chess mornings and women's mornings."
Sam Sami, 47, a Fiji-born support worker at the Salvation Army's Epsom Lodge for about 90 men, jumped at the chance of a Homeless World Cup team when it was first reported in the Herald last month. He put up a notice at the lodge and gathered a group of about eight.
Mr Sami joins in the games and has passed on his daughter's soccer boots to one of the players.
Mr McLuckie, who plays too, is trying to organise a second team in Queen St.
Marcel Coe, the tall, tousle-haired one, was the first one dressed and ready to play when the Weekend Herald arrived. He has been at Epsom Lodge for eight years and catches the bus every day except Thursdays to work at Workforce Industries in Mangere.
"I thought, well, I'll be in," he says. "It gets me up and about."
He's one of the keener ones on the field, calling out to the others to get to the ball.
The young Afghani asylum seeker, decked out in T-shirt and boxers, claps his hands above his head and shouts, "We're the champions!" after scoring most of the goals.
"Since I was very small I used to play soccer," he says.
Now 22, he came to New Zealand for business 2 months ago, "but unfortunately I found some religious problems and I was informed later not to return".
Warren Jones, 26, the one kicked out of his flat, is on his fourth spell at Epsom Lodge and has recently found a job in the kitchen at Sky City.
"I played soccer at school in Canada," he says.
Mr Mangham, the Kiwi poet, played C grade rugby at school. Until he was given his present medication, he also worked at Workforce Industries.
"I gave it up because of lack of energy to get up in the morning. The medication makes me tired," he says.
He moves slowly on the soccer field, but when he occasionally gets the ball, the enthusiastic praise from his teammates is infectious.
In the middle of the game, he walks off the field, beaming, to tell the reporter a new poem that has just come to him:
What were your thoughts
About sports?
www.homelessworldcup.org
HOMELESS WORLD CUP
* Sixth Homeless World Cup takes place at Federation Square, Melbourne, from December 1 to 7.
* More than 500 players are expected from about 50 nations.
* 14-minute games are played four-a-side on small street pitches.
* Players must have been homeless at some point since the last Homeless World Cup, or make their main income as a street paper vendor, or be asylum seekers, or in drug or alcohol rehabilitation and have been homeless within the past two years.
* Six months after the last World Cup, 93 per cent of players said they had a new motivation for life, 83 per cent had improved social relations, 38 per cent had improved their housing situation and 29 per cent had found jobs.
