Apia Leichhardt U20

Leichhardt sits in Sydney's inner west, and in the 1950s it was where Italian migrants settled in numbers. In 1954 some of them put together a sports association — Associazione Polisportiva Italo-Australiana, shortened to APIA — and the football side of it became the part people remember. The club still plays at Lambert Park, a ground of 7,500 in the same suburb.

The blue and brown are not a design decision anyone has since revised, and the old Italian nickname, I Marronazzuri, outlived a long period when the club was not allowed to use its own name. From 1992 the National Club Identification Policy and the club's finances pushed it into trading as APIA Leichhardt Tigers, and for a stretch simply Sydney Tigers. The original name and badge came back in December 2019 — the same year the side took the state premiership.

The high point on the field came in 1987, when APIA won the National Soccer League championship. The NSL Cup followed in 1988 and again in 1991. Long before that, in 1964, the club had taken the Australia Cup. The Waratah Cup wins are more recent and more frequent: three in the late 1960s, then 2018, 2021 and 2023.

Games against Sydney Olympic carry the most weight of anything on the fixture list; the inner west is small enough that the two clubs' supporters share streets.

In 2025 the club went into a joint venture with Wests Ashfield, entering the new Australian Championship as Wests APIA FC.

Of the players who passed through, Charlie Yankos is the name that travels furthest.