A weatherbeaten but focused Melville Over 45s men's team is heading off to the New Zealand Masters Games in Whanganui from February 6-8, seeking to build on a significant but largely unheralded achievement of having been crowned the Over 50s football champions there in 2023.

The 2023 win was considered a literal “coming of age” by some within Melville United AFC because it represented the club's first national title in the modern era (post amalgamation in 1996).

A Jason Chewins penalty gave the Melville Gryphons a hard-fought 1-0 win over perennial winners Kiwi Masters in the final of a tournament where - curiously - early rounds of matches were played with youth-sized goals.

However this title-winning achievement was never fully embraced by the wider Melville club after philosophical differences arose post-tournament over team selection criteria (should existing club members take precedence over past members?) to the extent that a detailed website report of the occasion was completely expunged from the record, leaving the Melville Gryphons as one of football's "ghost teams" with little more than a spectral historical presence.

But now - on the eve of a much-anticipated return to Whanganui - outgoing club captain Phil Wheatley (yet to be superceded in the role) says it is time to put aside selectorial differences, let bygones be bygones and belatedly celebrate Melville's triumph at the 34th edition of the New Zealand Masters Games in Whanganui in 2023.

And for Melville players such as Stu Timings (northern league player of the year in 1998), Lance Bauerfeind (Chatham Cup final goalscorer in 1988), Gary Monaghan, Derby Macdonald, Julian Ford and the Bouma twins, Wytse and Merv, there will be a "Benjamin Button feel" to their 2025 return to Whanganui.

That is because they will be seeking to compete in an age category five years younger this time around (over 45s) given there is no Over 50s title up for grabs, which will present a major challenge.

"It's like living out the lines of a Bob Dylan song," Wheatley philosophically reflected.  "We were so much older then, we're younger than that now." (My Back Pages, 1964).

Melville may well be a happier squad this time around but won't have quite the firepower of 2023, when a number of the club's former greats turned out. 

Goalkeeping ranks are particularly thin, with neither 2023 incumbent Tony "Tinky Winky" Govorko or Neil Somebody available. Rumour is Phil Govorko may make a comeback, or even 75-year-old Ray Mackintosh.

Meanwhile Melville's 1996 club golden boot Roy Day (40 goals) is being shipped in to boost attacking firepower. 

Article added: Thursday 30 January 2025