Will this be the year your team earns a storied place in New Zealand Football history? Entries are now open for the 2018 edition of the newly re-branded Football Foundation Kate Sheppard Cup.

Formerly known as the Women’s Knockout Cup, the competition was first contested in 1994 and has been won by ten clubs with Christchurch’s Nomads United claiming the inaugural title.

Auckland’s Lynn-Avon United are the most successful club in the history of the competition having won nine times, including seven of eight years between 2002 and 2009.

Last year, Glenfield Rovers lifted the trophy for the fourth time in seven years after a high-scoring encounter with fellow Aucklanders Eastern Suburbs in the final at QBE Stadium, Rovers eventually triumphing 5-4.

The re-naming of the competition to the Kate Sheppard Cup was announced yesterday at a formal function at parliament, for which Sport and Recreation Minister Grant Robertson was in attendance alongside New Zealand Football President Deryck Shaw and other dignitaries. Appropriately, the Kate Sheppard Cup announcement comes on the 125th anniversary of New Zealand becoming the first self-governing country in the world in which all women had the right to vote in parliamentary elections in 1893.

New Zealand Football Competitions and Events Director Daniel Farrow says the Kate Sheppard Cup has a special place in the New Zealand Football calendar.

“The Kate Sheppard Cup provides another domestic outlet for our country’s top female players with a number of recent champions well served by players who have represented their country at either age-group or senior Football Ferns level,” he says.

“It is an important player pathway which links the two strategic goals of New Zealand Football of more Kiwis loving and playing football and our elite teams winning on the world stage.”

Entries for the Football Foundation Kate Sheppard Cup close on Friday 30 March.

To enter your team please click here