Greg Draper – The Goal Machine

The New Saints are the best team in the Welsh Premier League, with that there is no doubt after winning the WPL for the last 8 seasons, but a big part of that has been the exploits of goal machine Greg Draper. Having signed for the club in 2011 from English side Basingstoke Town, the New Zealander immediatley hit the ground running in Oswestry. Draper came to the United Kingdom in 2010 after joining Basingstoke from Team Wellington who play in the New Zealand Premiership.

He scored his first league goal for the club in a 1-0 win at Stebonheath Park against Llanelli and his first season amassed a impressive 25 goals in all competitions as The New Saints won the League title and the Welsh Cup. Unfortunately for the New Zealander, the 2012-13 season was plagued by injury and he could only score 5 goals but the club went on to win the league without his significant contribution from the 2011-12 season. The 2013-14 season saw Draper return to form and it was in this season where he introduced himself as a super-sub, Draper played in the Welsh Premier League 26 times with 15 appearances coming off the bench and the New Zealander found the net 16 times in 1120 minutes on the pitch, on average in the WPL he scored every 70 minutes, also he netted twice in 30 minutes of action in the Welsh Cup. By now Draper was one of the most prolific strikers in European football and had a knack of making an impact off the bench.

His goal-scoring exploits continued into the 2014-15 season as he scored 17 goals and The New Saints retained their league crown, Draper continuing his prolific form with a goal every 88 minutes. Draper’s goals helped the club won a notable domestic treble as The New Saints won both cup competitions to go with their league title. The 2015-16 season saw Draper only playing 27 games in all competitions due to injury. In that season Draper scored 18 goals, all of those goals coming in only eight different games, what was more impressive in that season was his knack of scoring more than once in a game, in the eight games he netted, he scored more than once in six of them which included five in one game in the Welsh League Cup against Holywell. The 2016-17 season was a season of stability for Draper has he escaped his injury troubles and played in 39 games which also included The Scottish Challenge Cup after The New Saints were invited as champions of Wales, for Draper this was just another opportunity to add to his personal goal tally.

In that 2016-17 season, Draper netted 22 times in all competitions, not maintaining the same goal ratio as previous seasons but Draper would have been happier in getting on the pitch more often but the striker still netted every 106 minutes which by anyone’s standards is impressive. In his first Scottish Challenge Cup game Draper scored a hat-trick against Forfar Athletic as The New Saints won 3-1, and also netted three times as The New Saints smashed Rhyl by 10 goals to nil in the league as the club continued their dominance on the Welsh Premier League. The 2016-17 season also saw The New Saints win a world record 27 consecutive games. The 2017-18 season saw Draper maintain his goal-scoring form with 26 goals in all competitions which saw him score 4 in a league game for the second time in his New Saints career against Cefn Druids. He maintained his amazing goal ratio for the seventh season in a row, finding the net on average every 99 minutes as The New Saints again secured the league title along with qualification to the qualifying rounds of the Champions League and the Welsh League Cup.

It was the 2018-19 season that saw Draper hit international headlines, he spent more time on the bench than he did on the pitch predominantly being used as an impact player, but still won the Welsh Premier League’s golden boot after scoring 27 goals but only played 1,032 minutes of a possible 2,880 meaning he scored a league goal on average every 38 minutes. In all competitions he scored a fantastic 35 goals which included a 5 goal haul in a 8-1 demolition job of Llandudno in the quarter final of the Welsh Cup. It was no surprise that The New Saints again won the league and added the Welsh Cup to their trophy cabinet, but having a goal-scorer as prolific as the New Zealander usually means you will be challenging or winning major honours. Greg Draper has begun the 2019-20 in the same form he usually starts a season and has scored 18 goals in 21 league games which has included two hat-tricks and a four goal haul against Airbus UK.

In his The New Saints career, Draper has collected an unbelievable 186 goals in 279 games for the Oswestry based, even though the Welsh Premier League is not noted as being a competitive one, to maintain a record like Draper’s is tough to do in any competition. His knack of coming off the bench to score vital goals is a quality every striker would want, I’m sure that he has been offered opportunities elsewhere but as a fan of WPL, seeing someone like Draper in his prime of scoring goals does not come often and the WPL is better for having his quality in it.