Invercargill Old Boys will have to satisfy itself with winning the Churchill Rose Bowl for its Chatham Cup knockout competition efforts this season and can now concentrate on its bid to claim Southland Football’s Southland Finance premier league.

Visiting teams were unceremoniously sent packing from round two of New Zealand Football’s prestigious cup competition in Dunedin on Saturday.

AMP South Old Boys found the step up to the big-time a little beyond it as it crashed out 8-nil to Caversham at Tonga Park while just around the corner at Culling Park Timaru’s Northern Hearts met the same fate and by the same scoreline against Dunedin Technical.

Dunedin team Northern will join its counterparts Technical, Caversham and Roslyn as the four teams remaining to compete in the Soccersouth region semi-finals on June 14^th.

Roslyn disposed of Grants Braes 3-1 while it took extra time and a penalty shootout following a nil-all normal time draw before Northern progressed through with a 5-4 win over University in the shootout.

Old Boys was in defensive mode from the kick off in its encounter with Caversham and inevitably went a goal down at the ten minute mark when Caversham’s leading striker Carson Gorecki slotted the first of his three for the day.

From there on Caversham asserted its class on the game restricting Old Boys to a couple of long range shots on goal. The home team stretched its lead to 3-nil by the half time break.

Losing player-coach Scott Mackenzie at a crucial stage of the second half did not help Old Boys cause as Caversham struck three times in a five minute spell to destroy any slim hope Old Boys may have had of a fight back.

The one bright spot for Old Boys was the player-of-the-day performance from regular Spirit FC player Hamish Low.

Low has been moved to a more defensive role for Spirit and with his work rate increased is subsequently enjoying his best season for some time.

Mackenzie summed Caversham’s performance up by simply saying “They’re a very good team alright.”

Tim Cook 2, Croyden Wheeler, Patrick Fleming and Mike Smith completed the goal scoring for Caversham.

A feature of Dunedin Technical’s win against Northern Hearts was a hat trick of goals to ex-patriot Southlander Aaron Burgess.

A product of the Southland Football junior development system Burgess made his mark in New Zealand football when he capped a stellar season by scoring three goals in Technical’s 4-1 demolition of Waitakere City in the 1999 cup final.

On that occasion he also took out the Jack Batty trophy for outstanding player of the day.

However despite this and other goalscoring feats he failed to capture the attention of All-White selectors and moved off shore to ply his trade in Ireland before settling in Australia for several years.

He returned to New Zealand two years ago and following a year off to set up a business interest returned to the sport for Otago United and his former club Dunedin Technical.

Saturday’s hat trick was his fourth of the season.