Northern Region Football

Delivering Junior Football

Junior Football is delivered to tamariki by the Clubs around the Northern Region. The aim is to give every child a fun and enjoyable experience that will give the players a lifelong love of football.

NRF provides fixtures for U9-U12 gamedays. Teams play on a home & away basis between 8.00am-1.30pm on Saturday mornings. U9/10 play 7v7 for 2x 25 minute halves. U11/12 play 9v9 for 2x 27.5 minute halves.

On this page are links to the fixtures for each region and to the NRF Junior Handbook which provides a more detailed look at some of the key details on how junior football operates within the Northern Region.

Teams are grouped by their RSO region (Northland, North Harbour, Waitakere, Auckland, Counties Manakau) in junior football.

Fluid Fixture System
There are no public facing results, standings or divisions in junior football. The main goal of junior football is to give each and every child a fun and enjoyable experience that will give the players a lifelong love of football. Clubs will submit results of matches to NRF so that NRF can assess each teams challenge point. If NRF identifies that a team is scheduled to play with another team that is not at their challenge point, NRF will change the teams so that everyone is playing at the correct challenge point.

Junior Festival Days

NRF has been running junior festivals for many years in Northland. Where the junior teams in each age group congregate at one venue to play three to four mini-games.

In 2024 NRF is piloting this concept in the Auckland region. There are over 150 teams in U12 Mixed alone, so it is not possible for all 150 of those teams to congregate at the same venue. In Auckland teams will come together in hubs of 6-8 teams to play three to four mini-games of 25 minutes each.

U11 & U12 players will be placed in hubs located all across the greater Auckland region with teams from other regions that they would not normally play with on regular game days.

This provides a different type of football experience in the eyes of the child. They will go to different venues they may never have been to before, see uniforms of other teams they may have never seen before and play with three or four different teams on a single day.

Good Sports is a culture change initiative aiming to create positive sporting experience for children by educating and supporting the key adult influencers in youth sport.

Good Sports is a well-established and highly regarded initiative that is well aligned to Balance is Better. It recognises that supporting and educating adults is crucial to ensure Kiwi kids have the best chance of having positive sporting experiences and ultimately growing a lifelong love of sport.

Practitioners and research all find that many issues in the youth sport system stem from adult involvement. These issues can include poor side-line behaviour, overuse injury, burnout and disaffection with sport.

Good Sports focuses on raising adults’ awareness about their behaviours and promoting a positive shift in that behaviour. New Zealand Football, and other regional federations are following Sport New Zealand’s lead that Good Sports is our Parent Engagement tool as part of the overall Balance is Better philosophy