FootballSouth_Premier_League
Southern Premier League (New Zealand)
Football league
The Southern Premier League (known as the ODT Southern Men's Premier League for sponsorship reasons) is a New Zealand association football league competition administered by Southern Football involving clubs from the lower half of the South Island of New Zealand. Five of the clubs are from Dunedin and one each are from Wanaka, Queenstown, Mosgiel, Timaru, and Invercargill.
The league has also previously included an Otago youth development team.
Until 2009, the league was known as the SoccerSouth Premier League. Since the inception of the competition, it has been dominated by Dunedin City Royals and the two predecessor teams which merged to form that club, Caversham AFC and Dunedin Technical.
The league was expanded from eight to ten clubs at the start of the 2022 season, with the addition of teams from Timaru and Invercargill.
As of 2022 the winner of the southern premier league enters to a promotion match against the winner of the Canterbury Premier League. The winner of this match gains a spot in the Southern League.
The team placed last in the Southern Premier League is automatically relegated to its appropriate regional league. The winners of Fletcher Cup (Otago), Donald Gray Memorial Cup (Southland) and South Canterbury Division 1 (South Canterbury) play in a play off for promotion into the Southern Premier League.