{"id":122685,"date":"2025-11-07T09:35:11","date_gmt":"2025-11-07T09:35:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/122685\/"},"modified":"2025-11-07T09:35:11","modified_gmt":"2025-11-07T09:35:11","slug":"auckland-fc-v-wellington-phoenix-auckland-fc-launches-petition-to-unban-mascot-from-sky-stadium","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/122685\/","title":{"rendered":"Auckland FC v Wellington Phoenix: Auckland FC launches petition to unban mascot from Sky Stadium"},"content":{"rendered":"
\u201cIt is why we have launched this petition and travelled to Parliament, the home of fairness and decency, to get this decision overturned.\u201d <\/p>\n
Wellington Phoenix head of media Brenton Vannisselroy said the reason behind T\u0101ma\u2019s exclusion was that the mascot race is entirely made up of Wellington-based mascots. <\/p>\n
\u201cOur mascot Nixie has invited their friends from Wellington to provide some entertainment in between the two matches at Sky Stadium tomorrow,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
\u201cTemu Nixie, or whatever Auckland FC\u2019s mascot is supposed to be, wasn\u2019t invited to the event as, the last time we looked, it is not a mascot for any of our city\u2019s teams.\u201d <\/p>\n
Auckland FC mascot T\u0101ma the Kingfisher has been issued a ban from Sky Stadium. Photo \/ Supplied<\/p>\n
Vannisselroy said T\u0101ma was free to \u201cwatch Wellington\u2019s mascots from the stands tomorrow\u201d but summarised with one final jab. <\/p>\n
\u201cSorry Auckland, this is one thing your money\u202fcan\u2019t\u202fbuy.\u201d <\/p>\n
The Wellington Phoenix women\u2019s side kickoff at 4pm against Canberra United. The now-controversial mascot race will then take place, with the grudge match between the hosts and Auckland FC starting at 7pm.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cIt is why we have launched this petition and travelled to Parliament, the home of fairness and decency,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":122686,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[51,1558,9218,3019,26845,71,305,1739,6328,111,139,69,128,57694,85934,85935,8861,544,213,16674,25447,61,701,85933,52],"class_list":["post-122685","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-auckland","tag-been","tag-before","tag-clash","tag-fc","tag-from","tag-have","tag-launches","tag-mascot","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-petition","tag-phoenix","tag-playful","tag-punches","tag-sky","tag-some","tag-sports","tag-stadium","tag-thrown","tag-to","tag-tomorrow","tag-unban","tag-wellington"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122685","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=122685"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122685\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/122686"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=122685"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=122685"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=122685"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}