The New Zealand Football Championship (known as the ASB Premiership from 2011 for sponsorship reasons) is the national association football league in New Zealand. It is a amateur association football (soccer) sports franchise league that is operated by New Zealand Football. The league is run separately from various Winter regional club competitions, and many of the teams competing are franchises jointly run by Winter clubs. The ASB Premiership does not include the Wellington Phoenix who play in the Australasian A-League. It is currently sponsored by ASB Bank.

The league is an eight-team system, with each club playing everyone else twice. After the end of the regular season, the top four teams progress to the playoffs. The playoffs are run as a home-and-away semi-finals series, with the winners progressing to a one-match Grand Final.

The league competition phase was initially contested by a three-round, 21-match league system, each team playing every other team three times. This system was in place for the first four seasons of the competition. It was changed to the present two-round, 14-match system in 2008, due to financial difficulties affecting some of the teams in the league.

Nathan Levi Fontaine Ellington (born 2 July 1981) is an English footballer who plays a striker for Championship side Ipswich Town.

Born in Bradford, West Yorkshire, Ellington began his career with non-League Tooting & Mitcham United, making one first team appearance at 16 years of age. He played regularly for the youth team there, but was frustrated by a lack of first team chances, so he moved to Walton & Hersham, before moving to Bristol Rovers in February 1999 for £150,000. He made his professional debut on 23 February 1999, coming on as a second-half substitute for Jamie Cureton in a 1–0 home defeat to Gillingham. He came off the bench to score his first goal on 6 March 1999, helping his team to a 2–0 win over York City. He found a growing reputation with the side,^{[citation needed]} and his highest point for Rovers was scoring a hat-trick in a 3–1 win against Premiership team Derby County in the FA Cup, on 6 January 2002. This was the first time a team from the Third Division had beaten a Premiership team in the FA Cup. It was also the second of three hat-tricks scored by Ellington for Rovers, with all three coming within the space of a month. He was named in the PFA Division Three team of the year for 2001–02.

Darren Cheesman (born in Hackney, London) is an England and Great Britain Hockey field hockey International.

A member of the current England and Great Britain Hockey Teams, he was also a member of the Great Britain U21 team that won Silver Medal at the 2007 Junior Olympic Games in Sydney, Australia.

Darren has been recognized as one of Britain's most skilful and exciting players. After playing in the 2005 Junior World Cup, Darren was signed by Oranje Zwart, a Premier League club in Netherlands. He spent a year there playing with and against the best players in the world.

The Midfielder / Forward plays his club hockey at East Grinstead Hockey Club, England Hockey Premier League champions for the last two years, who he rejoins after spending a season long spell at Old Loughtonians HC, who are in the Division 1 of the England National League. During his first spell at East Grinstead HC, Darren was voted 'Premier League Player of the Year' after a formidable season, which also saw Danny Hall, also of East Grinstead HC snatch the 'Premier League Top Scorer' award. This season, Darren has been instrumental in East Grinstead's successes both domestically and in the Euro Hockey League.