Junior Tournaments
Papamoa FC will again be hosting our popular junior tournaments in 2024. These tournaments provide the opportunity for a wide variety of teams from across New Zealand to participate and play new teams. The dates for this year's tournaments are:
- King's Birthday Tournament: Sunday 2nd June
- July Tournament: Sunday 7th July
Registration
Teams must submit an expression of interest. Teams will then be waitlisted and we will invite those who have places to register.
Places are allocated on a first come, first served basis.
Expressions of interest are not yet open. We will update this page with more information in due course.
Changes for 2024
The growth in our tournaments has meant that we have needed to restructure how we run our tournaments. Rather than running boys' and girls' tournaments on separate dates, this year will see girls and boys competing on the same day, with a split in the grades across two dates.
Our King's Birthday Junior Tournament will feature boys 8th, 10th, and 12th grades and girls U10 and U14 grades.
Our July Junior Tournament will feature boys 9th and 11th grades and girls U8 and U12 grades.
Why the changes?
Thanks to the support and participation of teams from across Auckland, Waikato, Bay of Plenty, Gisborne, and Hawkes Bay, our tournaments are now too big to run in the same way that we have previously, with a boys' tournament on one date and a girls' tournament on another.
We have split the grades across the two dates to level out the number of teams that will be participating and so that we can allocate field space efficiently.
Girls' grades
WaiBOP have signalled their intention for some girls' grades to move to single year spacings, as opposed to the current two-year gaps, for the 2024 season.
We have kept our tournaments at the same two year gaps for expressions of interest, but if there is enough demand then we will consider implementing single year grades.
We encourage all teams to submit expressions of interest so that we can anticipate numbers and whether we will have enough teams to run an exceptional competition with one year age grades.
More information
For more information on our tournaments, click the links below.
Frequently asked questions
Why did you move one of the tournaments to a long weekend?
We chose King’s Birthday weekend because it puts some space between our two tournaments, it means many parents won’t have to work the day after the tournament, it is closer to the start of the season so the fields will be less worn, and the weather in Tauranga is typically better in June than it is in July.
Does this mean boys and girls will be playing each other?
No, the boys’ and girls’ grades will still run separately, they will just be taking place on the same day.
Can mixed teams still compete in the boys’ grades?
Yes.
I have two daughters, and now I have to come on two separate days. Didn’t you think about that?
We did consider this, but please remember that there are also people who have a son and a daughter who play and would have had to come to both tournaments if we did separate boys’ and girls’ tournaments.
Why don’t you just have both tournaments one day after the other?
With so many teams playing, the fields are heavily worn after a tournament day. This would mean that the teams playing on the second day would have to play on substandard pitches, which is not a good experience for the players. This issue is exacerbated if there is poor weather.
