Latest news with #Under16s
ABC News
11-08-2025
- Sport
- ABC News
PNG heads to Solomon Islands for OFC Junior Championship for the first time in seven years
Papua New Guinea's men's Under-16s football team has qualified for the OFC Junior Championships for the first time since 2018, under the leadership and guidance of head coach Mathew Witu, The team left Papua New Guinea yesterday, set to compete in the Solomon Islands from August 15 and aiming to work their way up to the top. "The Tonga tournament was our gateway into qualifying for this year's Championships," Witu said. "I keep emphasising during our past two weeks of training that they are the very ones that secured the spot for us to compete after a long while and they are to maintain the same spirit and go out there, play their heart out and represent their country with pride no matter the outcome." Players were selected from various provinces nationwide based on their on-field experience. Coaches have been working tirelessly throughout the two-week training following the selection. Witu with the PNG men's Under-16s squad at a training run. ( Supplied ) One setback the team faced was player positioning on the field. Most of the players are selected from the provincial level. "Coaching and understanding their positions on the field is something that some coaches lag behind with knowledge-wise, hence, most of the players just play for passion and follow suit without having exposure to other positions," Witu explained. "When they make it to national level, we have to teach and train them these things; skills which should have been harnessed and honed at the provincial level. So it's been hard overall; the team has been hard on the grind despite only having a two-week time frame to prepare for the tournament." Despite that, Witu felt the preparation had been good for the boys, despite the selection being done at short notice. "We were only given two weeks to train and prepare; I'd say the tactical parts that we still need to improve on are ball control and ball positioning, but overall everyone's performance is great," he said. PNG's Under-16s men's soccer team, with coaching staff and management at the airport prior to departing for the OFC Junior Championships. ( Supplied ) PNG are in Pool A of the competition, alongside Melanesian rival, Fiji. Cook Islands and Tahiti round out their pool. The young PNG squad will play Cook Islands on August 17, then Tahiti on August 20, and wrap up with Fiji on August 23. The tournament also doubles as a qualifier for the only two spots for Oceania and its representatives at the FIFA U-17 World Cup, which is held every two years.
FF News
02-06-2025
- Business
- FF News
Monzo Reports 8x Surge in Profits to £113.9 Million on the Back of Record Growth
Monzo, the UK's leading digital bank with more than 12 million customers, has today shared its financial results for the year ending March 31 2025. Monzo has again delivered record growth and sustainable profitability as it continues to see momentum accelerate. Recently crowned Best British Bank, the company attracted 2.4 million new customers in its last financial year and saw engagement and weekly active rates continue to increase further – with 67% of customer growth coming from word-of-mouth referrals. Revenues increased significantly across all areas – including lending, transactions and subscriptions – propelling Monzo's adjusted profit before tax to £113.9m, up from £13.9m. Customer deposits grew 48% to £16.6bn, with the number of weekly active users increasing 28% as Monzo added a record number of new products and features to help customers manage more of their financial lives. Average Revenues per User grew 16% for business customers and 15% for personal customers, underscoring the deeper relationships Monzo is building with its customer base. The financial year saw Monzo scale and invest with discipline as it made further strides on its ambition to become the one app customers turn to to manage their entire financial lives. The company welcomed a new generation of customers through its hugely successful Under 16s product, which saw a 180,000-strong waitlist in its first week alone, and launched Monzo Pension. Its new subscription plans – Monzo Perks, Extra and Max – were a huge success with almost 900,000 personal customers now paying for extra benefits. Monzo Business accelerated at pace on the back of the launch of Monzo Team, a product that serves more complex needs for larger small businesses. Together, these new products contributed to an increase in subscriptions income of 50% to £75.2m. The total number of business customers grew by 49% to reach 625,000, with Monzo Business making up 12% of total revenue. The company brought more game-changing savings features to the palms of customers' hands – with the 1p Saving Challenge, launched in January, attracting more than 1 million customers who have collectively saved around £30m so far. With 2.3 million people using Monzo's Instant Access Savings product, the company paid more than £250 million in interest to customers in the last financial year. Leveraging its in-house tech stack, Monzo continues to develop industry-first security tools for its customers. FY2025 saw the business launch a trio of unique security features including Known Locations and Trusted Contacts, to help prevent customers from falling victim to fraud. In addition, and led by its expert financial crime teams, Monzo's real-time fraud detection and prevention system is using AI to trigger a range of interventions. In FY2025 Monzo prevented 2.9 times the value of unauthorised fraud compared to the previous year. Engineers also pioneered Monzo Stand-In, a separate back-up banking infrastructure that ensures customers can continue to use important services in the rare event of an outage. In an industry where platform outages continue to cause mass disruption and worry for customers, Monzo invested in a solution for its customers, giving them the service they deserve from their bank. Monzo maintains a market-leading average Net Promoter Score of +70 – in an industry where the average is around 30 in the UK. The most recent YouGov Brand Index showed that Monzo is out-pacing the rest of the banking industry on metrics including consideration, recommendation, and satisfaction. Two months into the new financial year, Monzo continues to bring new products to customers with the launch of Contents Insurance and Undo Payments – another industry-first tool to help customers have more control over their money. Growth has continued to accelerate, with the company attracting more than 300,000 new customers in April alone – making it its biggest acquisition month yet. In May, Monzo was named Best British Bank, Best Banking App and Best Children's Financial Provider at the British Bank Awards – which is voted for by customers. Looking ahead, Monzo is accelerating its international ambitions. The business is continuing to build out its product offering in the US, and has established its European base with an office and a growing leadership team in Ireland. In the UK, product expansion continues at pace, with additional features across personal and business accounts soon to be announced. TS Anil, Group CEO of Monzo, said,:'Another year of raising the bar and driving scale, growth and profitability! 2.4 million customers chose Monzo, we launched more products than ever, increased customer engagement – and saw record growth for Monzo Business. By bringing the best of technology and banking together and remaining customer-obsessed, we're seeing accelerating growth and momentum and unprecedented customer love – with Monzo recently named Best British Bank. And the best part? We're still just getting started. '
