{"id":57032,"date":"2025-08-10T06:04:13","date_gmt":"2025-08-10T06:04:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/57032\/"},"modified":"2025-08-10T06:04:13","modified_gmt":"2025-08-10T06:04:13","slug":"flag-football-in-new-zealand-the-growing-sport-pushing-for-la-olympics-2028","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/57032\/","title":{"rendered":"Flag football in New Zealand: The growing sport pushing for LA Olympics 2028"},"content":{"rendered":"

Flag football<\/a> is a condensed, five-a-side version of American football. Blockers and contact tackles are replaced with rippa-rugby style tags, but the foundations of the game, such as set plays and the forward pass, are still hallmarked. <\/p>\n

\"TheThe five-a-side version is taking off in New Zealand.<\/p>\n

Kiwis who grew up playing rugby or touch possess transferable skills, but the key for international success is to improve the foundations and professionalisation, Fabela said.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a journey with many steps, the first stop being the Intercontinental tournament in China, spanning from October 23-27.<\/p>\n

AdvertisementAdvertise with NZME.<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201c[There\u2019s] no choice but to win the gold medal to secure our spot,\u201d Fabela said, referring to qualification in the 2027 World Championships in Finland.<\/p>\n

These two events and another Intercontinental in 2027 are the side\u2019s best hopes of securing a top-six world ranking and a place in the 2028 Olympics.<\/p>\n

New Zealand currently rank 13th in the world. <\/p>\n

\u201cSome would say it\u2019s impossible \u2013 I don\u2019t believe that. I believe we have the right coaches and athletes to compete,\u201d Fabela said. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe need to treat ourselves as high-performance athletes and act like we\u2019re going to the Olympics.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"CoachCoach Myke Fabela.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a challenge Fabela has already begun to address, including through holding a camp at Wellington\u2019s New Zealand Campus of Innovation and Sport (NZCIS), the nation\u2019s premier high-performance training facility.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we want to win, this is where we need to be. This is where all the best athletes in our country at their craft are preparing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Defender Tom Rance has been part of the national set-up since 2023 and said Fabela\u2019s new approach has elevated the team to new heights.<\/p>\n

AdvertisementAdvertise with NZME.<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cI think the team\u2019s definitely got a lot more professional and the programme which Myke\u2019s taken over this year \u2013 he\u2019s really lifted it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rance highlighted the importance of the NZCIS experience for the players, given the purely amateur nature of the sport. <\/p>\n

\u201cAs a small sport, it\u2019s all self-funded. It is hard for some of us to keep making these commitments, and the last thing we want to do is price out players.\u201d <\/p>\n

And the top side have an increasingly large pool of talent from which to draw from.<\/p>\n

From just 16 teams competing in a national tournament in 2020, this year there were 50.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s grown massively because people have experienced the culture, and it just feels like you\u2019re one huge community,\u201d Fabela said, adding that the code has grown three to four times faster than he thought it would, \u201cand now that the Olympics have happened, that growth will be extraordinary\u2019.<\/p>\n

Women\u2019s side have bigger mountain to climb<\/p>\n

The men aren\u2019t the only team striving for Olympic glory.<\/p>\n

The head coach of the national women\u2019s flag football side, Jono Entwistle, said it\u2019s a \u201clong shot\u201d for his side (currently ranked 15th) to make the cut, but he believes his team has the ability and the want to perform.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s super cool about these w\u0101hine is their hunger to learn,\u201d Entwistle said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey want every part of it; they want the film study, they want the technical breakdown, and they want the written feedback.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"TheThe New Zealand women’s squad.<\/p>\n

Like the men, it\u2019s a \u201cyear-on-year\u201d process in terms of qualification, with the biggest work-on being installing the finer, more technical sides of the game.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t have some of those fundamentals that really translate,\u201d Entwistle said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe do have a long-term plan, but right now we\u2019re really focusing on the short-term plan of performing at continentals so the campaign can keep rolling.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Flag football is a condensed, five-a-side version of American football. Blockers and contact tackles are replaced with rippa-rugby…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":57033,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[47025,32601,64,63,2651,485,47028,47027,47023,35008,47022,11011,596,580,47019,4717,47026,25727,47021,47020,47024,3127,10018,19001,588,85,9501,320,8281,3205],"class_list":["post-57032","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-47025","tag-32601","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-bring","tag-california","tag-cleats","tag-didnt","tag-emigrated","tag-even","tag-fabela","tag-flag","tag-football","tag-for","tag-growing","tag-in","tag-joked","tag-la","tag-myke","tag-native","tag-nelson","tag-new","tag-olympics","tag-pushing","tag-sport","tag-sports","tag-that","tag-the","tag-when","tag-zealand"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57032","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=57032"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57032\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/57033"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57032"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57032"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57032"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}