The Reta Fitzpatrick Cup, is an annual New Zealand

knockout A knockout (abbreviated to KO or K.O.) is a fight-ending, winning criterion in several full-contact combat sports, such as boxing, kickboxing, Muay Thai, mixed martial arts, karate, some forms of taekwondo and other sports involving striking, ...

football Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kick (football), kicking a football (ball), ball to score a goal (sports), goal. Unqualified, football (word), the word ''football'' generally means the form of football t ...

competition for

Mainland Football Mainland Football is one of six federations of New Zealand Football, representing regions of Northern and Central Canterbury, Tasman, Nelson, Marlborough and the West Coast. History Canterbury United Pride was founded in 2002, to represe ...

women's first teams. First played during the 1974 season, it has been running on for 20 years longer than the

Kate Sheppard Cup The Kate Sheppard Cup, currently known as the New Zealand Football Foundation Kate Sheppard Cup for sponsorship purposes, is New Zealand's premier Single-elimination tournament, knockout tournament in women's association football. Founded in 199 ...

. It is organised by and named after

. It has been known as the Morrison Mitsubishi Reta Fitzpatrick after it
headline sponsor
A concurrent Men's Cup has been held since 1913 called English Cup. The tournament consists of 1 randomly drawn round followed by the semi-finals and the final. All quarter-final, semi-finals and final games are hosted at

English Park English Park is a football (soccer), football stadium in Christchurch, New Zealand. It is the home stadium of Canterbury United, which competes in the ASB Premiership, as well as Western AFC which currently compete in the Mainland Premier League. ...

during the week, generally on a Tuesday at 7:00pm. Entrants are not seeded, and depending on the amount of teams there are, teams can receive

byes In cricket, a bye is a type of extra. It is a run scored by the batting team when the ball has not been hit by the batter and the ball has not hit the batter's body. Scoring byes Usually, if the ball passes the batter without being deflected, th ...

History

The cup is named after Reta Fitzpatrick who was one of the early pioneers for the women's game in Canterbury. Reta, was a manageress (called the team chaperone in the 70's) for many seasons at club level for

Rangers A ranger is typically someone in a law enforcement or military/paramilitary role specializing in patrolling a given territory, called "ranging" or "scouting". The term most often refers to: * Park ranger or forest ranger, a person charged with prot ...

(now Coastal Spirit). She also occupied this role for Canterbury from 1976 until 1992. Outside of this responsibility she also filled many other roles on the committee at Rangers as well as serving on the Canterbury Women's Football Association - (CWFA) for three decades and was made a life member at both Rangers and the CWFA. The Canterbury Women's Football Knockout Cup was first contested in 1974 when the top women's clubs included the likes of

Halswell Originally a separate village, Halswell is now a residential suburb of Christchurch, New Zealand, located southwest of Cathedral Square on State Highway 75. History Halswell is named after Edmund Halswell QC (1790–1874), a government off ...

, New Brighton, Rangers and

Nomads Nomads are communities without fixed habitation who regularly move to and from areas. Such groups include hunter-gatherers, Nomadic pastoralism, pastoral nomads (owning livestock), tinkers and Merchant, trader nomads. In the twentieth century, ...

. Halswell went on to win the very first Cup competition in 1974. In 2005 the Knock Out Cup was renamed The Reta Fitzpatrick Cup with Reta on hand to hand over the trophy for the first time to inaugural winners New Brighton. It is testament to Reta's legacy that the Cup remains a much sort after trophy on the Canterbury sporting landscape - and we pay homage to the numerous hours of volunteer support Reta gave to football within the region.

Winners

Since its establishment, the Reta Fitzpatrick Cup has been won by 12 different teams. Teams shown in ''italics'' are no longer in existence.

MVP

Notes

References

{{reflist Women's association football in New Zealand Association football cup competitions in New Zealand