Miles Downie AFC Futsal Instructor
Football NSW Coach development

Training For Maccabiah

The Hakoah Futsal Club has divided its mens team into two teams. Everyone who is eligible to go to Maccabiah has been put into one team and all the other mens and youth players into a second team. By doing this, we hope that when the trials for Maccabiah are run, a lot of our Hakoah players are selected to play. For the Maccabiah Team and the players that are selected this is the start of a long journey that will hopefully lead to Gold in Israel in 2022.

Training for the Maccabiah started weeks ago and will now continue until the team leaves for Israel in 15 months. Just as importantly as training each week, this team will play in back to back futsal competitions. Firstly it will play in the FNSW Winter League that starts in a week. At the conclusion of that tournament the players will play in the FNSW Premier league and simultaneously in the Allsorts Super League. Finally next year they will play again in the FNSW Winter League. If history is a guide, Covid allowing, there will also be two tours to Thailand. THe first tour will be in March 2022 and the second one one in June 2022. Whilst this team may not do one better than the last team that went to Maccabiah in 2017, which won a silver medal (the first football medal of any colour in either mens or womens, indoor or outdoor, masters, Opens, Under 18s or Under 16s), there will never have been a better prepared Australian team in any sport.

Coach Simon Kieth
Manager Ashley Swartz

Players
Jono Barzel
Dylan Basger
Jake Besser
Dan Engleman
Robbie Ezekiel
Noah Felich
Jake Lees
Coby New
Brad Sarif
Julian Shalome
Josh Shubitz
Adam Strasser
Gillad Swartz
Tal Weiner

Future Futsal Roos

Football NSW has decided that to ensure that NSW futsalers stay at the forefront of Australian Futsal, FNSW needs to encourage and nurture young players. To this end they have appointed Miles Downie (Hakoah’s mens Coach) to run a program where the best players in NSW will train together through out the year.

Hakoah has been asked to nominate its best players to be part of the program

We are pleased to announce that the following Jewish players have been nominated

Gillad Swartz
Adam Strasser
Zac Sapsford
Noah Felich

And for the female Program
Toni Sharp

The Club is encouraging FNSW to expand the program and to create a further even younger group. If that occurs we will be able to nominate some brilliant 15 and 16 year olds.

The Cage – Jan 2021
The cage is a series of tournaments held over a year for open men’s teams, The competition is a hybrid competition in that it runs on Astro turf but is played on a court the size of a basketball court. The ball used is a futsal ball. Every time you compete you get allocated points depending upon where you place in the tournament. This was the third time that we had entered the competition. The previous two times we had made the Grand final, winning one and coming runners up for a second. This time however most of our men’s players were away so we brought into the team two rising stars, Noah Felich from our youth team and Coby New from our under 15 Boys team.
This tournament is like a carnival, music is blaring the games are short and many immigrant communities enter teams. We started very strongly winning our first three games

Hakoah Vs Sydney Street Crew 5 1 (win)
Hakoah Vs Karikalan 6 1 (win)
Hakoah Vs Project 33 3 1 (win)

In the semi-final our lack of players started to tell and even though at two all we hit a shot that rebounded off one post on to the other, we lost to a very physical Estraalia
Hakoah Vs FC Estraalia 2 3 (loss) Semi Final

In the 3rd 4th playoff we again asserted our dominance and won
Hakoah Vs Sydney Street Crew 3 1 (win) third

Standings after three rounds
Hakoah (Bondi) 36, UTS 28, Sydney CF 24, Links 20, SDT 16, Mosaic 16, North Sydney 16, Sydney Fusion 16, FC Estraalia 12, Sydney Street Crew 12
ydney AllBlacks 4, Banksia 4, Project 33 4

22nd Dec 2020

So the 2020/2021 season has finally come to an end, and what a season it was. With Covid the season looked very different to previous seasons. The season was shorter this year and the age groups were condensed. (There was only a U12 Boys, U13 Boys, U15 Boys, and a Combined Youth and mens competition. On the girls side there was a combined Under 14 and U16 competetion and a combined U18 and Womens Compeition) Hakoah entered an under 12s Boys team. This team had a number of new players including a brilliant female player. During the season the team lost a few games to a very good accademy team. This did not bode well for the Grand final when we each won our respective semi finals. Going in as under dogs we stepped up a gear and won 7 0. A very very good result. Our Mighty Under 13 Team went one better than they did last year. Last year they were undefeated until the Grand Final, this year the team won every game including the Grand Final. The St George Team were huge and very physical. Playing on a smaller court the larger, stronger team has all the advantages. This did not phase our boys though. They ran out easy winners 5 2. We can’t wait for these young players to start playing for our men’s team in the next three or four years. Our U15 boys came fist in the regular season only to lose the Semi Final to the team that came fourth. A great lesson for next year. Our Mens team who have been undefeated for the last 14 months made the Grand Final and had to play the Mighty Mountain Magic team. To add to our woes most of the mens team including its coach, were interstate and couldn’t come back for fear of being unable to leave the state again. Up stepped our youth team and in the last minute of extra time scored the winning goal. An amazing result. We entered three girls teams in the U16 age group. Two of the teams were very young. One team made the semi finals and was leading with 5 minutes to go, only to concede two goals quickly. With futsal the game change in a moment. The Under 18 Girls Team are Champions for the 2020 season of the combined wons under 18 competition. In their last three games they beat the Hakoah Women’s team 5 4 then the Mountain Magic Women’s team 6 2 and finally in the grand final the Mountain Magic U18’s 3 2 in the last 30 seconds of extra time. Looking back at the season, the club did very well. That said 2021 will be a new year and the previous years results will mean nothing.

EXciting developments coming (stay Tuned)

1) The Cage tournament (feb 2021)
2) Champions of Champions Tournament in Port Macquarie (Late Feb 2021)
3) Future Futsalroo Program
4) Winter Comp

22nd Dec 2019

So the 2019/2020 season has finally come to an end. And what a season it was. This year the Club entered five accademy teams into the local Allsorts competition. An under 7 boys, an Under 9 boys, an under 10 boys and under 11 and under 13 boys team. The highlights for this group of teams included, the U10 and the U13 boys winning their respective competitions. Some of the under 10 boys (who were nine at the time being invited to train and play a few games with the Under 11A team. And some of the under 13 players being selected to play in the Under 13 NSW State team. As noted below the club managed to have selected almost all of it coaches and 25 of its players to represent NSW in the National Championships (see below for a list of the succesful coaches and players).

The club came fourth in the Club Championship with 142 points. The highest number of points that it has ever got. Highlights for the Club teams include, The Under 12 boys winning their competition, the under 11 boys improving tremendously from the start of the season to the end. Our men’s team moving from 7th last year to fourth this year, then winning their semi-final on penalties and then winning their grandfinal, to be annointed Champions. No men’s team in only its second year has ever won the men’s cometition. In fact only six clubs have ever won the competition, Sydney Magic twice in 2008 and 2009 Quake in 2010 Sydney City Eagles in 2011 Dural 5 years in a row from 2012 to 2016 Inner West in 2017 Dural againin 2018, Enfield 2019 and Hakoah in the 2019/2020 season. Another highlight for this teams was that at the start of the year understanding how good they team were, they were asked to play against the Australian Futsalroos. A game they eagerly accepted and a game that in the end the Futsalroos were lucky to draw. However the days of the Club only being about the men’s team are long gone. We had 5 teams out of nine make the finals. (our under 12 boys, our Under 16 Boys, Our Youth (U19 boys) our Women and our men. The equal most of any Club. Then miraculously four out of the five won their semi finals and made it into the Grand Final. We were not so succesful in the grand final, two teams losing in the final five seconds of their games. The 12’s who had been the best team for the whole season, lost effectively with .5 of a second to go. The under 16s lost with 5.7 seconds to go. The soccer gods can be so cruel some times. Our youth were beaten by the Vipers, who were simply better than we were on the day. And then our men in the final game of the day upset Inner West Magic winning 4 3. An amazing day and an amazing result not just for the mens team but the club as a whole.

15 august 2019

Stephen Peters appointed Coach for the Under 15’s and the Under 17’s girls team.

01 June 2019

Miles Downie has been appointed as the mens coach for the 2019/2020 Season

01 Dec 2018
The following players were selected for NSW honours in December 2018

Ethan Di Giacomo U12 NSW Storm
George Frousalias U12 NSW Storm
Chloe Tseros U13 NSW Lightening
Eden Walker U14 NSW Thunder
Dylan Gil U14 NSW Thunder
Marcus Mallard U14 NSW Thunder
Alvin-John Khoshaba U14 NSW Lightening
Gisella Pipino U15 NSW Thunder
Olivia Mitchell U15 NSW Storm
Kiara Holyoake-Caceda U15 NSW Storm
Lucia White U15 NSW Storm
Felicity Mcneill U15 NSW Storm
Jordan Weizman U17 NSW Country
Steve Tzanakes Coach
Raffaele Capasso Coach
John Jiggins Coach
Pete Nowakowski Coach
Daniella Batten U16 NSW Metro AFA
Akala Howell U16 NSW Metro AFA

01 June 2018

With Brett Rosenberg flying out to Canada, He has resigned his treasurer responsibilities. Dylan Basger has agreed to take on the role. welcome Dylan.

30 June 2018

Another Great Sponsor has come on board. Business and Tax Money House, a Bondi Junction based Accountancy firm joins the family

25 May 2018

The Club is really pleased to announce that Aquila Super has come on board as a sponsor (25/5/2018)

15 May 2018

Due to the fact that Scott Gilligan has found a job in Canberra we have had to find some coaches to replace him. Obviously finding one coach to do Scott job is impossible so we have found two. We are incredibly lucky to have been able to employ: (15/5/208)

John Jiggins to Coach our Under 17 Girls and our Under 11 and Under 12 Girls academy. JJ comes with a great predigree. we look forward to watching how his teams progress through the season

We have also managed to employ last year’s Coach of the year (Premier League 1) Steve Tzanakes. He will be coaching our Under 12, under 13 and under 14 boys teams.

28 April 2018

The Club has appointed Raffaele Capasso as the U16 Boys coach. Raffaele has a tremendous futsal coaching history (See U16 team tab) (28/4/2018)

25 April 2018

The Club is really pleased to announce that Pengana Funds Management has come on board as a sponsor (25/4/2018)

02 April 2018

The Club has appointed a number of coaches for the 2018/2019 season (02/04/2018)

U10 and U11 Boys will be coached by Adriano de Mello

U12 and U14 Boys will be coached by Scott Gilligan

The Youth team will again be coached by Robbie Ezekiel

The U11 and U12 Girls will be coached by Scott Gilligan

The U13 and U15 Girls will be coached by Stephen Peters

The women will be coached by Paulo Dutra