42nd Douglas Villa Junior Tournament
Updated: 17 hours ago
An estimated 2500 people converged on Memorial Park sports grounds over the weekend for the 2026 Douglas Park AFC Junior Tournament. 84 teams from Wairarapa, Wellington, Hutt Valley, Palmerston North and Dannevirke took part in this year’s competition. Coordinator Sophie Van wijk said that the annual tournament for teams in the 8th to 13th grades was extremely popular. “It’s a fun event. The main point is to get kids playing football.” She added that it’s a big event for the wider Masterton community. “It helps the accomodation people, restaurants, cafes and supermarkets.”
With so many teams competing, organisers had to plan for a total of 192 games over the two-day tournament. Everything from promotion, accepting registrations, working out the draw and timetable, not to mention marking out the nine pitches and setting up the goals, but also arranging enough portaloos and rubbish bins, and then having to clear everything up on Sunday evening.
This was the 42nd year that the club has run this tournament. The event programme has a line saying the tournament is a beloved tradition since 1983, and it clearly is as Sophie points out that many clubs were already asking about arrangements for next year’s event.
Photos from three games - Douglas Villa Hearts (vs) Upper Hutt Gryphons, Douglas Villa Avengers (vs) Remutaka Thunders and Douglas Villa Shamrocks (vs) Tawa are online here.