After months of anticipation and excitement, Blacktown City have arrived in Canberra for this year’s KEEPUP Kanga Cup and are looking to build on the success from last year’s tournament.

This year’s Under-13’s team features a whole host of talented young players who have taken up the challenge of playing up an age group against their fair share of bigger and tougher opponents, but head coach John Caruana is confident in what his squad brings to the table.

“We are very excited to be here, this is our second time round playing with most of the same group… this group is all underage, so they are all playing up, but it is a great experience for them,” he said.

Blacktown City FC pride’s themselves on being one of the leading clubs in the NSW NPL with proven youth development programs for elite players and strive to create talented footballers.

Founded in 1953, Blacktown have a long history of success in the NSW topflight with eight Men’s NPL Premierships and seven Championships and has produced some great Aussie talent over the years including Socceroos greats Robbie Slater and Matt Ryan.

City opened their account with a hard fought 1-0 over a resilient Tigers FC side in their opening match at Calwell on Monday.

Blacktown City will have five teams competing from under-9’s to under-13’s in this year’s tournament and are looking to build on the club’s recent success on the Kanga Cup stage.

“The kids have been excited about the Kanga Cup for months and they are really looking forward to it, and we have a really good young group of players,” Caruana said.

“We went all the way last year, but we did have some older boys in the team so this year it’s a much younger group… but the goal for the team is to go all the way again.”

“I’m confident that we will compete every single game… we competed very well today against some much bigger boys… at the end of the day we just try and play football and give the players a great experience.”

The KEEPUP Kanga Cup is a fantastic opportunity for teams from around Australia and the world to compete against some of the best up and coming young talent and is a great platform for all the young players in their footballing journey’s.

[KEEPUP.] Kanga Cup. Fun. Friendship. Football.

Words: Dion Stergiopoulos