World Cup stars all start-off somewhere, with a group of young championship players certainly kicking-off their careers on the right foot, grabbing gold at one of the major annual football festivals in Australia.

Showing how competitive the “world game” is in the region, Dubbo Devils Under 14 Boys’ representative side recently won the Kanga Cup for their age group in a tournament hosted annually in the nation’s capital.

Not only did the local lads not lose a game, they only conceded one goal along the way, remaining undefeated in eight matches in the Open Plate competition, proud team manager, Jodie Kesby told Dubbo Photo News.

“It is the biggest soccer tournament in the southern hemisphere and goes for a full week during the school holidays in July,” Jodie explained.

“You nominate a representative side to take part, with the Devils’s team selected from among players from the eight clubs in Dubbo,” she added.

Results for the lads were consistently good, with a 7-1 win amongst their games, as well as a 5-0 victory, and two 3-0 triumphs, before defeating the highly-competitive Far South Coast rep side for the Plate.

“In a hard-fought grand final, we had a 1–0 victory in a tight contest to take the trophy, with Player of the Match, young Jobie Ramien.

“It was fantastic, the boys worked really hard to get that reward,” Jodie enthused.

The result was even more satisfying, Jodie revealed, as the win had been targeted as one of the “goals” the group of committed youth players had set themselves for the year.

“We had put that one of our list of three major results we wanted to achieve for 2026; one was we wanted to do really well in the ‘Merino Cup’ (an annual pre-season youth football tournament) we took part in earlier in the year,” Jodie recalled.

“We then set ourselves for the Western Youth League, which we won, and then to go on and win the Kanga Cup, it’s a great achievement,” she concluded.