New Plymouth Rangers is an amateur

association football Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a team sport played between two teams of 11 players who primarily use their feet to propel the ball around a rectangular field called a pitch. The objective of the game is ...

club based in

New Plymouth New Plymouth ( mi, Ngāmotu) is the major city of the Taranaki region on the west coast of the North Island of New Zealand. It is named after the English city of Plymouth, Devon from where the first English settlers to New Plymouth migrated. ...

New Zealand New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island count ...

. They were founded as New Plymouth Old Boys in 1940, and have had a complex naming history. The team play at

Merrilands Merrilands is a suburb of New Plymouth, in the western North Island of New Zealand. It is located to the south-east of the city centre. The Waiwhakaiho River runs past Merrilands to the east, and Te Henui Stream runs past to the west. Demographic ...

Domain. The club has men's and women's senior and social teams, as well as over a dozen junior teams.

History

New Plymouth Old Boys was founded in 1940 and was based at Western Park, New Plymouth. New Plymouth United was founded in 1965 and based at

Lynmouth Lynmouth is a village in Devon, England, on the northern edge of Exmoor. The village straddles the confluence of the West Lyn and East Lyn rivers, in a gorge below Lynton, which was the only place to expand to once Lynmouth became as built ...

Park. New Plymouth Old Boys entered the

Central League The or is one of the two professional baseball leagues that constitute Nippon Professional Baseball in Japan. The winner of the league championship plays against the winner of the Pacific League in the annual Japan Series. It currently consist ...

for its first time in 1971. In 1973 New Plymouth United merged on trial with Moturoa for a single season as Moturoa United, playing in the Western League and the Central League Division Two. United left the arrangement in early 1974. In early 1974 New Plymouth Old Boys joined with Central City to become New Plymouth City with the arrangement lasting for two seasons. In mid 1975 Taranaki United was formed as a local composite side to play in the Central League, taking over from Moturoa in the Central League Division Two for the last remaining games of season, before being relegated to the Central League Division Three (North) for the 1976 season. The amalgamation continued until 1984 when New Plymouth Old Boys replaced Taranaki United for the 1985 Central League. Central City broke away from Taranaki United in 1983, reforming New Plymouth City for an entry into the 1983 Central League. In 1987 Old Boys won the Central League Division Two and in 1989 won the Central League Division One and promotion to the 1990

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 ...

. After a restructuring of the league system by the NZFA in 1993, New Plymouth Rangers entered the

New Zealand Superclub League The Superclub league was a national association football league competition which ran in New Zealand from 1993 to 1995. It replaced the first incarnation of the New Zealand National Soccer League and was itself replaced by the National Summer So ...

, in which it competed for three seasons until the competition was scrapped by the NZFA at the end of 1995. New Plymouth United won the 1992 Central League Division Three after its first season in the competition before amalgamating with Old Boys at the end of that year and competing in the 1993 Central League Division Two as New Plymouth Rangers. In 2017 New Plymouth Rangers entered the

Central Federation League The Central Federation League is an amateur status league competition run by Central Football for association football clubs located in the central region of the North Island, New Zealand. It is currently in the third level of the New Zealand foo ...

for the first time. The club won the 2020 Central Federation League before being relegated at the end of the 2021 season to the Taranaki Premiership.

Chatham Cup

New Plymouth Old Boys and New Plymouth United both competed for the

Chatham Cup The Chatham Cup is New Zealand's premier knockout tournament in men's association football. It is held annually, with the final contested in September. The current champions of the Chatham Cup are 2022 winners Auckland City, who defeated Eastern ...

. Old Boys reached the later stages of the competition as Taranaki regional champions in

1951 Events January * January 4 – Korean War: Third Battle of Seoul – Chinese and North Korean forces capture Seoul for the second time (having lost the Second Battle of Seoul in September 1950). * January 9 – The Government of the United ...

and

1955 Events January * January 3 – José Ramón Guizado becomes president of Panama. * January 17 – , the first nuclear-powered submarine, puts to sea for the first time, from Groton, Connecticut. * January 18– 20 – Battle of Yijian ...

, also reaching the Quarter-finals of the cup in

1988 File:1988 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The oil platform Piper Alpha explodes and collapses in the North Sea, killing 165 workers; The USS Vincennes (CG-49) mistakenly shoots down Iran Air Flight 655; Australia celebrates its Australian ...

and

1989 File:1989 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The Cypress Street Viaduct, Cypress structure collapses as a result of the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, killing motorists below; The proposal document for the World Wide Web is submitted; The Exxo ...

. These feats have not yet been equalled by the club under its new name, though Rangers did reach the Fifth Round (last 16 stage) in the 1995 competition.

References

{{Reflist
UltimateNZsoccer website New Plymouth Rangers pageClub website
Association football clubs in New Zealand Sport in New Plymouth 1940 establishments in New Zealand

History

Chatham Cup

See also

References