It was a full blooded Cup Derby at Farrington Park on Sunday with three red cards and plenty of handbags drawn at five paces- My favourite piece of childish churlishness was when a Miramar Striker stomped the United Keeper's hat into the mud after a penalty box entanglement. Not the best advert for Fair play for my Two year old's first game, but great entertainment for the adults. Miro didn't seem to care though. Although the actual score was 3-1 to the home side, eliminating Wellington United from a great 2010 cup run, as far as Miro was concerned the real score was: Packet of Chippies 2-Lemonade 1
The best way to describe the come down after a four week orgy of back to back televised sport is an enveloping ennui. World Cup fever, for what it was worth in the end after the shock elimination of dark horse New Zealand, has dissipated. The heroes' parade has come and gone and the ticker tape is wrapped in the gills of a harbour floor Gurnard. The Boca Juinors too came and went, playing like, well, Juniors, whereas the Phoenix put on a competent display in the wind tunnel atmosphere of the Wellington Stadium. It is quite interesting to see visiting teams struggle to come to terms with the intense wind effects of the Stadium.
Preseason friendly or not the Blue and Gold scalp of Boca Juniors is an impressive one for the Wellington Phoenix, and must be a boost for their confidence ahead of the A-League season.
But it is with the greatest expectation since the World Cup final's hooplah died down that I am heading along to a local park today to catch my club side Wellington United take on local rivals Miramar Rangers in a Chatham Cup Quarter Final derby. A call was put out to our club members to paint the Miramar ground Orange, and thats what we'll be doing, wearing our own Salmon football tops along to support our First team in a rare Quarter final appearance.
It will be my son's first time at a football match as an occasion, he has been to plenty of games at our local Newtown Park, but this is his first destination game- complete with Orange jumper, face paint and sausage sizzle. Result to follow.
Yes, this was the one. The World Cup that New Zealand finally got a crack at. But Spain 82, just like Argentina 78, washed right over me. Well, almost, right over me.
1982 has beome such an iconic phrase in New Zealand football that it is hard to write objectively about it, harder still becuase I was only 6 years old and living in a Rugby world, playing for Papatoetoe RFC, and mad keen on the Blue and White Stripes of Auckland, and the Red, Black and White Stripes of Counties-Manukau- the All-Whites meant nada to me, nor did their Spanish Odyssey. Yet it still managed to permeate just enough to have significant reverberations for me later on.
In my Manurewa schoolyard we played Softball, Rugby (Tackle Rugby, touch was not yet an option), the A-Team and Star Wars. I played Short stop, Full Back, 'Howling Mad' Murdoch and a Stormtooper respectively.
Then one day a large round ball was introduced at the interval. All hell broke loose as us kids tried to play this foreign game, never having seen it. Soccer was such an alien invader-with positions such as Striker and Defender, it really suited the Atari zeitgeist of the early 80's.
So even though the 1982 World Cup did not really register with me, like a low-flying enemy saucer it was at least starting to buzz on my radar.
Two years or so after 1982 I found a cut-up copy of a magazine about the All Whites' exploits, produced by the tobacco company Rothmans (the sponsorship seemed fairly innocuous then, it seems frankly outrageous now.) Reading that magazine I got a sense of that epic road to the finals, which was a great achievement in itself. I also started to understand the true international flavour of Football- that a lad from Manurewa could play in exotic realms like Saudi Arabia or Sevilla, that the whole world would be watching a kid from Miramar.
All the imagery and nouns of 1982 held, and still hold, such a mystique for me; Chinese-Taipai, Kuwait, Van Hattum, Rufer - the utter Magnum PI brashness of Steve Sumner's droopy moustache and his casual aggression in the tackle, the Singaporean keeper's timeless style of a green top and red Adidas trackpants:
The casual, hirsute glamour of this uniquely Kiwi entry point into a forbidden world of handballs and offsides was appealing for a sport curious 8 year old- but it was to be another two years before the first World Cup which registered with me personally was to take place. Still 1982 will always be special to every Kiwi football fan, whether experienced first hand or through the adulterated medium of a second hand Smoker's programme. Whatever way you look at it those were glory days for NZ Football, hopefully to be bettered this coming June.
As an aside I have a tenuous personal connection with the 1982 World Cup in the fact that the artist Joan Miro was commisioned to create a poster for the 1982 World Cup:Now although my son Miro was not named after the artist, rather the synonomous New Zealand native tree, it is a rather nice synchronicity-one which Miro's mum thinks is just a little too coincidental to be a true accident.
Saturday 9 January 2010 was a very special day in Wellington, New Zealand.
The sun was beaming down on our own little patch of South Pacific paradise, and tourists scoffed ice-creams in the Botanic Gardens and on the Waterfront. Amongst them a handful of Brisbane Roar fans, in town to see their team take on the resurgent Wellington Phoenix.
It was the second to last day of my holidays. I started the day by heading up to the Town Belt with Miro to gather pinecones for the winter- it may seem like an odd choice of activity, but it is actually really fun and a 'recession friendly' father and son activity. Watching Miro stagger about the steep forest calling out for 'cones' gave me great joy, and now we have a few bags of starter fuel for our home fire.
After lunch I headed up to the Dell in the Botanic Gardens to partake in pre-game beer and a spot of Kubb, which urban legend has it was a training routine for viking warriors. This yard game is like a cross between Jenga, Petanque and Chess, and is easy to pick up but hard to put down.
It is quite a nice way to spend a sunny afternoon, hanging out with my footballing cohort Richard Hallam, whose aim was well off that day, missing the King by a country mile, despite the look of concentration in this (posed) shot: After the half drunken game of Kubb we hightailed it to the stadium to watch the Nix.
The first half was nothing special really- the Nix defended well, but to be honest Brisbane looked an inferior force compared to past incarnations of the Queensland Oranje. Their one or two real chances of the half were snuffed out by former Brisbane keeper Liam Reddy, now wearing the Amber and Black of Wellington.
But the second half, oh, the second half. I moved from my usual spot near the Yellow Fever around to the rejects zone of aisle 10 by halfway, to try and get a different perspective on the game. I am glad I did, for I was in a prime spot to see Eugene Dadi stamp his mark on the match and his mark on Wellington, by producing a wonderfully timed overhead volley. Then, mere minutes later, he completed a debutant brace with an instinctive finish after some great build up work. The Nix kept attacking, and despite a consolation goal to the Roar (which in itself was a fine finish) the three points were safe.
The next day I went up to Martin Luckie Park with 20 other Yellow Feverites for the weekly kickaround, and spirits were high. Finally this season there is renewed optimism in the Phoenix camp and hushed voices are even discussing play-off football.
When life seems complicated, and even the sport you love is drawn into the maelstrom of chaos and terror, (an event which was made all the worse for the cackhanded political maneuvering afterwards) it is sometimes nice to just sit back and contemplate the simple things in life:
A gorgeous summer's day; pinecone hunting; obscure viking lawn games; and overhead bicycle kicks.
Enjoy Dadi's cool goal again, courtesy of 101 Great Goals:
In an extravanganza featuring contemporary and traditional african dancers, South African world music star Johnny Clegg, and African sports stars such as Makhaya Ntini, Haile Gebreselassie and, erm, David Beckham, the draw was made for the 2010 World Cup this morning in Capetown.
Here's the song Johnny Clegg did live at the show for you to listen to while you read the rest of this post. I'm not really a fan of Clegg but I thought this was quite catchy, and 'the Scatterlings of Africa' is a nice poetic phrase:
Here is the full draw for South Africa 2010:
For New Zealand Group F will be tough, but as rank outsiders every group looks tough. The top seed in Group F is Italy, and they are the current World Champions. It is unlikely we will ambush them like we did in the 2009 Confederation's Cup warm up match when New Zealand took the lead an incredible three times over Italy before sanity was restored and Italy stumbled home 4-3 winners. The circumstances will be quite different next time we meet. Paraguay finished third in South American qualifying, racking up wins over Brazil and Argentina. Slovakia finished top of UEFA Group 3, knocking out their former siamese twin and past-powerhouse Czech Republic in the process.
Which group will pick up the inevitable Group of Death tag? On face value it has to be either Group B or Group G. Group G has the mouth watering colonial battle between Brazil and Portugal, dark horse Cote d'Ivoire and complete unknowns North Korea. Group B has African aristocrats Nigeria, the unpredictable Greece, workhorse South Korea and the always competitive Argentina. I also think Australia got a very tough draw in Group D. It could be the turn of the Black Stars of Ghana to shine into the quarter-finals, and Germany are always there at the business end of a FIFA World Cup.
The draw ceremony itself was good fun and made for great television with some hugely (unintentional) comical moments. Draw assistant Charlize Theron was doing her utmost to wind up FIFA General Secretary Jerome Valcke, undercutting the pomposity of the ceremony with faux-naive freestyles and stage whispers. The tension between the two was palpable, FIFA brass obviously worried that Charlize was going to turn into a rampaging mad-libbing monster on them, and pull another stunt like pretending to draw out 'Ireland' from the bowl as she did in the rehearsal.
The loudest guffaw was reserved for poor old confused Sepp Blatter who forgot where the first game was being played and had to have the host, Carol Manana, remind him. For the amount of money he's paid you'd expect him to be completely savvy about his product.
It was a far cry from the last time New Zealand was at a draw ceremony. Apparently the 1982 draw in Spain was thrown into a complete farce when a revolting machine spat the balls all over the floor. This stressed out the FIFA staff, who in turn made the poor Spanish kids, who were roped in to provide the cute factor, cry. The 2009 version ran like clockwork- micro managed down to the last detail by a legion of FIFA event underlings.
After watching the draw on TV, Miro and I went down to the launch of the official World Cup ball at a sports store in Central Wellington.It was a fairly strange event with a little portable pitch set up inside the store- of course Miro wanted to get on and strut his stuff but there seemed to be some sort of Kid's skills competetion going on to promote Ricki Herbert's new Football Academy. Ricki Herbert was there signing shirts and balls, and he seemed pretty relaxed after the draw. He was constantly taking calls from his assistant Brian Turner, who was at the draw over in SA, and the media looking for a soundbite or two.
The Jabulani ball (An Isizulu word meaning to celebrate) looks as plastic as ten dollar ball from a discount toy store, but I bet it handles like a dream. I would dearly love to take one to the park for a punt or two. Retailing at $200 plus NZD and with only 500 in the country I doubt that I'll be kicking one around Martin Luckie Park anytime soon.
I bought Miro a mini Jabulani ball for xmas, and got Ricki to sign it. It is the perfect size for his little feet to dribble:
Ah! I'm salivating at the merest thought of the hooplah, the pageantry, and the orchestrated litany of pre-ordained catastrophe that is a World Cup Draw.
Meanwhile the bunfighting over the yet to be divvied up 2018 World Cup has begun. As evidenced by this article in the Sunday Star Times. Quite apart from generating some predictably negative and parochial in-fighting based around which region has the better stadium (Auckland or Wellington), or the massive questions around inter-confederational co-hosting, this story has all the hall marks of a 'counting chickens before they fully cross the goal line' scenario. Yes it would be a dream come true to host a group, or even a game, in Aotearoa but Aussie has to win the bid first and most likely won't be using the co-hosting angle as a point of difference.
My personal view is that actual competition games would be a long shot, but the more likely hosting of pre-tournament trainings, friendlies and the associated media junkets means that NZ would be likely to get a piece of the action.
Meanwhile I keep telling my son that next year he will be sitting on daddy's lap while we both enjoy the spectacle of the world's best entertainers in action, resplendent in their traditional, representative colours.
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