Warilla Wanderers honour club legend with pre-season tournament

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The pre-season tournament is named after club and Illawarra footballing legend, Joe Moreno, who passed away in late 2021 after a short battle with Sporadic Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD).

Four teams - two from each competition - will kick-off the tournament on Wednesday evening. In the first match, an all-Premier League affair with Albion Park taking on Coniston and in the second fixture, the Wanderers will host newly-merged Shellharbour FC at King Mickey Park.

All matches will be played on Wednesday evenings for the next three weeks heading into February, with the top two teams taking on each other in the Joe Moreno Cup final. Matches will be 70 minutes in length.

Wanderers club president Michael Clout said that it was an honour to recognise a legend of the club legend.

"It's massive for the club and the supporters," he told the Mercury.

"Warilla has a large Spanish background as a football club when it was first established. It was a meeting place for all the Spaniards when they immigrated over from Europe they were able to play the game they loved together. Joe being a club legend, there is no one else in the club history that is more worthy of a Cup named after them just with what he's done from 1967 when the club was founded."

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