Caversham is an association football club based in

Dunedin Dunedin ( ; mi, Ōtepoti) is the second-largest city in the South Island of New Zealand (after Christchurch), and the principal city of the Otago region. Its name comes from , the Scottish Gaelic name for Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland. Th ...

, New Zealand. They compete in the ODT FootballSouth Premier League. They are named for the suburb of Caversham to the southwest of Dunedin's city centre, best known for its former international sports venue Carisbrook. Caversham AFC, however, are based not there but at Tonga Park, located one kilometre to the south in the suburb of Forbury.

Club history

Caversham AFC was founded in 1931, and has been based at Tonga Park throughout its history. Caversham's premier team home strip is a white jersey with wide red band, white shorts, and red socks. The away strip is forest green shirt, greenish-white shorts, and forest green socks. Until 2009, their home strip was a red shirt with a broad horizontal black band edged in white, red shorts with a similar band across the left leg, and black socks. That kit is now used by the club's second XI. Caversham competed in the former

New Zealand national league The New Zealand Men's National League is a men's football league at the top of the New Zealand football league system. Founded in 2021, the New Zealand National League is the successor to the New Zealand Football Championship. The league will be ...

from 1971 to 1973 and from 1975 to 1977, competing in the first of those seasons as part of an amalgamated Dunedin Suburbs team. Their best performance came in

1976 Events January * January 3 – The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights enters into force. * January 5 – The Pol Pot regime proclaims a new constitution for Democratic Kampuchea. * January 11 – The 1976 Phila ...

, when they finished third. They have reached the semi-finals of the Chatham Cup on six occasions (in

1970 Events January * January 1 – Unix time epoch reached at 00:00:00 UTC. * January 5 – The 7.1 Tonghai earthquake shakes Tonghai County, Yunnan province, China, with a maximum Mercalli intensity scale, Mercalli intensity of X (''Extrem ...

2006 File:2006 Events Collage V1.png, From top left, clockwise: The 2006 Winter Olympics open in Turin; Twitter is founded and launched by Jack Dorsey; The Nintendo Wii is released; Montenegro 2006 Montenegrin independence referendum, votes to declare ...

2007 File:2007 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: Steve Jobs unveils Apple's first iPhone; TAM Airlines Flight 3054 overruns a runway and crashes into a gas station, killing almost 200 people; Former Pakistani Prime Minister of Pakistan, Pr ...

2010 File:2010 Events Collage New.png, From top left, clockwise: The 2010 Chile earthquake was one of the strongest recorded in history; The Eruption of Eyjafjallajökull in Iceland disrupts air travel in Europe; A scene from the opening ceremony of ...

2011 File:2011 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: a protester partaking in Occupy Wall Street heralds the beginning of the Occupy movement; protests against Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, who was killed that October; a young man celebrate ...

, and

2012 File:2012 Events Collage V3.png, From left, clockwise: The passenger cruise ship Costa Concordia lies capsized after the Costa Concordia disaster; Damage to Casino Pier in Seaside Heights, New Jersey as a result of Hurricane Sandy; People gather ...

), though they have yet to appear in a final. Caversham won 15 titles from 2000 to 2017. Caversham had a poor 2018 by their standards in the ODT Football South Premier League, finishing fourth after eight games.

Notable Former squad members

* ( GK)

Jason Batty Jason Alfred Batty (born 23 March 1971) is a New Zealand former professional footballer, who played as a goalkeeper, and is the current New Zealand National Team Assistant/Goalkeeping Coach. Batty frequently represented the New Zealand nationa ...

* ( FW)

Nathan McCullum Nathan Leslie McCullum (born 1 September 1980) is a former New Zealand international cricketer, who represented the New Zealand cricket team in One Day Internationals and Twenty20 Internationals. He has represented New Zealand in six T20 World C ...

* ( DF) Alex McGregor * ( GK/ DF/ MF/ FW) Richard Murray * ( DF) Rupesh Puna * ( DF) Maurice Tillotson

Tonga Park

The club's home ground is Tonga Park. This lies immediately south of Caversham in the suburb of Forbury. Caversham's clubrooms are located on the west side of the ground, on Surrey Street (). The park is bounded on two sides by schools – the twin single-sex secondary schools of

King's High School King's High School is a private, interdenominational Christian school, located in Shoreline, Washington, just north of Seattle. It is part of King's Schools. It enrolls approximately 470 students in 9th through 12th grade. King's High School al ...

and Queen's High School, and Macandrew Intermediate School. Originally used for

rugby league Rugby league football, commonly known as just rugby league and sometimes football, footy, rugby or league, is a full-contact sport played by two teams of thirteen players on a rectangular field measuring 68 metres (75 yards) wide and 112 ...

and known by a variety of names, including Mammoth Park, The Stadium, and The Speedway, it was renamed Tonga Park (the

Māori Māori or Maori can refer to: Relating to the Māori people * Māori people of New Zealand, or members of that group * Māori language, the language of the Māori people of New Zealand * Māori culture * Cook Islanders, the Māori people of the C ...

word for ''south'') after it was purchased by the

Dunedin City Council The Dunedin City Council ( mi, Kaunihera ā-Rohe o Ōtepoti) is the local government authority for Dunedin in New Zealand. It is a territorial authority elected to represent the people of Dunedin. Since October 2022, the Mayor of Dunedin is Jules ...

in 1932.Goodall, M., and Griffiths, G. (1980) ''Maori Dunedin.'' Dunedin:Otago Heritage Books. p. 50. Cavvy-vs-Mosgiel

References

External links

Club websiteDunedin City Council's Tonga Park page
{{Soccersouth Premier League Association football clubs in Dunedin 1931 establishments in New Zealand