All Whites Lose to Socceroos

Australia defeated New Zealand 2-1 at the MCG last night. Brett Holman slipped in at the far post in the last minute, the All Whites let down by a moments lapse in concentration as they contemplated the Bourke Street nightlife and a post match pot or two of well earned Coopers Sparkling Ale.

Despite the result there was still plenty to be excited about as a NZ football fan last night...and plenty left to ponder.

The Australian reaction was mixed, of course the fans at the 'G celebrated at the final whistle as though they'd just downed Brazil- this was their final farewell to their heroes and Holman had saved Pim Verbeeks blushes. But the Ocker Bloggers and Commentators had a more sober view the next day, this was a poor Australian performance on the whole, made even more ugly by Vince Grella's two footed lunge and Tim Cahill's flying feet, both fouls on the battle-scarred Leo Bertos. These were desperate acts from a team not expecting such a fight in a carefully stage managed 'friendly." To Verbeek's credit he said as much, denouncing Grella and Cahill for their poor challenges.

Bertos got off with just a few scrapes but Tim Brown fractured his shoulder in an awkward fall. He has flown back to Auckland for treatment, here's hoping it doesn't destroy his dream of playing in the World Cup.

I was impressed at how composed the All Whites looked, calmly playing out of the back and patiently building up attacks. New Zealand were the better team in the first half, and fully deserved the lead at the break, courtesy of a Chris Killen goal set up by the influential Simon Elliott. It was only in the second half, once key play makers Bertos and Brown had been kicked and rucked out of the game, and the subs started to flow that the Kiwis resorted to the more traditional Route One style. This gave Australia more time with the ball and their superior world ranking eventually began to show.

While none of Australia or New Zealand's South Africa Pool mates will be quaking at the performances on display the result would start to deflect some of the criticism from sceptics who think New Zealand's appearance at the World Cup Finals is cause for much mirth and merrymaking.

There is still a long road until credbility is reached, but last night was a good start.

Finally I must admit some minor Fortean culpability for the loss, tempting fate with a 92nd minute text to a mate watching in a Pub- no sooner had I pressed send on my text, conveying that I thought a 'draw was a fair result,' than the decisive cross was met by Holman, instant chaos theory at its most lethal.

I am sorry All Whites, this was as much a warm up for us fans as it was for the players- I won't be tempting fate come June 15th by trying to preempt the score via text before the final whistle.

For those who may have missed it, here are the highlights:

A Blind Date with Destiny

It is a Crowded House in Melbourne tonight, as Socceroos coach Pim Verbeek and All Whites Gaffer Ricki Herbert lay their cards on the table in the first transtasman football match in five years, a 'friendly' warm up for the World Cup Finals. Apart from the 60,000 or so fans at the MCG and the hundreds of thousands watching across Australia and Enzed this game will be appointment viewing in Paraguay, Serbia, Ghana, Germany, Slovakia, the distant lands which got drawn in the same pools as the Anzacs back in December

It is only when you consider this fact that you realise how big the World Cup is for New Zealand sport, the World Cup, a world event in deed as in name.

There is probably not much that Serbia, Ghana and Germany wouldn't already know about Australia, but New Zealand's foes are probably a bit more in the dark about the team from football's hinterland since we have been international wallflowers for many years. The reclusive North Koreans are probably the only other World Cup team with more mystique than New Zealand.

For us minnows the World Cup is indeed a blind date with destiny. A date that starts tonight with us courting our old suitors Australia- and I do mean old. As Ryan Nelsen pointed out its practically a may-to december romance, Austalia's golden generation of premiership stars will probably not be in action Four years time, but Fallon, Smeltz, Moss, Reid, Smith and Co. will be hitting their straps in 2014.

So tonight is as good a measure as any ahead of the World Cup as to how far New Zealand has come, and how far we have to go.

Some have called Herbert's plan to field the same starting 11 which lined up against Bahrain in Manamana as unadventeruous. But tonight is not a time for risk taking, it is a chance to consolidate the partnerships across the park, a chance to test our best against a very capable opponent in an intense caldera of rivalry. Besides, with a relaxed policy towards substitutes in this Fifa canctioned friendly Herbert has plenty of scope to blood his newbies, Aaron Clapham, Winston Reid and Tommy Smith.

So with just over 2 hours to kick off tension is building in the streets of Melbourne, as much in the lounges and pubs of Wellington. Are they fretting as much in Ascuncion, Berlin or Accra? We'll see in 4 hours time.

To get us across the line here is the great transtasman cultural collaboration with a song dedicated to those going a little bit stir crazy:

Spiderman, where are you coming from?

Seeing as there hasn't been much footie on recently (ahem ...ok there was the Barca-Inter Milan diversion...) here's a little Superhero whimsy to pass the time between kicks.

Legendary USSR goalkeeper Lev Yashin may have been dubbed the Black Spider for his preternatural ability to fly and spin through the air but this guy is taking the arachnid metaphor to its nutty nadir:



He must have had too much Mary-Jane in the prematch build up:

1982 & All That

A Personal History of the World Cup: Part Two

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.

The Season is on the Line

My lower grade club team, the Salmon, had their last hit out before the season yesterday- a meandering 5 nil loss to a very handy Marist side 4 divisions above us.

...13 orange shirts a-swaying in the breeze....

There is nothing like playing football in a World Cup year.
Thankfully the Southern hemisphere winter coincides with the quadrennial June Soccernalia. As our club football calender reaches its climax the prematch talk won't be so much about whether Island Bay shipped three goals against Stop Out, nor who the golden boot over at Miramar Rangers will be, rather all the sideline natter will be about the ins and outs of Group F, the latest great African hope, the bizarre refereeing decisions and even more bizarre goal celebrations. For two months every four years us plodders and hackers can dare to dream... Ah it makes you feel part of a global mockery all over again. Last World Cup a shiftworking team mate decided to video (remember video!) all the games and watch them at a more convenient time - convenient for him perhaps, he made us promise schtum for the good part of a month, banned from mentioning Ballack and Lahm, verbotten from discussing Zidane and Materazzi, we finally gave up, making him a social pariah, left out of our World Cup bubble.

It will be great to have our own team to support for a change, but through decades of habit I'll still be rooting for pitiful England. As for the All Whites a realistic goal will be a point from pool play and perhaps some stand out moments like having Italy on the ropes for the first half, before the Azurri bring on Pirlo et al to settle the score, or a Fallon header which deceives the Paraguayan Goalkeeper, and the bookies, if only for a second. Bereft of real world-class talent and lacking experience the All Whites will have to work hard and rely on a strong team culture to make an impact. Unlike 1982 when many of the New Zealanders reported being star struck I believe the 2010 All Whites know that despite the odds they are not merely there to make up the numbers, but to compete across all parts of the paddock, from Paston to Smeltz.

For NZ Football the Season really is on the line; despite a bumper year of successes the nation's arm chair critics will make their minds up based on Herbert's Jabulani jaunt this coming Northern Summer. Herbert has a point to prove, and surely a point will prove it.

It's a Yellow Out

Wellington Phoenix host the Newcastle Jets in what amounts to an A-League Quarter-final on Sunday 7 March.

The Yellow Fever have called upon the city, nay the very country, to show its true colours and go yellow for the game. With less than 5,000 tix left to sell the Nix final home game of the season will be a scorcher.

Unfortunately as per my previous post I'll be knee deep in artiness, taking Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea out to the curious theatre at Southward Car Museum in Paekakariki. Paekakariki means valley of the green parrot- Ill make time in my schedule to ask Land Information NZ to temporarily change the name to Paekowhai- the valley of yellow!

I'm hoping that since this company is British they'll be partial to a bit of football, and may tolerate me tuning to Radio Sport in the Greenroom, and perchance the quiet bits of the show will be punctuated by my cries of joy when Greenacre slots home the winner.

I have had nary a chance to ruminate upon matters football for the past week, missing opportunites to post about the Phoenix beating Perth, Ryan Nelsen's dodgy knee, the All Whites strip being blacked out and all manner of other sundry odd spots.

But yesterday I saw some awesome athleticism, namely the man and his digger at Waitangi Park, and the Monks from Sutra perform a monkey dance on a steel pole. This was after I had performed two Haka Powhiri- one at dawn to welcome the Festival artists and a special Haka Powhiri on stage at the St James Theatre to welcome the cast of Sutra. The Monks were very gracious and said through their translator "your dance [the haka] is like a Kung Fu to us."

Here is the proof:
Before yesterday I had only ever performed one Haka before- as a weedy teenager on Niue Island before our 7th form Geography Class Rugby team got pounded into the ground by the Niue High School 1st XV. (On the Niue national News that night it was the lead story, and we were called the Rotorua Boys High 1st XV!)

A Haka is an intense experience- drawing up all manner of mana and wairua from the Earth below, and entwining host and guest in an ancient, energetic bond. And then you want to smash them.

IF it was done right, and that is a BIG if, i wouldn't mind seeing the All Whites take a leaf out of the All Blacks book and summon the warrior chief Te Rauparaha before taking on the Italians!

On second thoughts maybe not, have some monkey pole dancing & general easts meets west craziness courtesy of Sutra instead:

The Longest Derby II- This time it's 'Perth'onal

Groan... Ok, so I end my post drought with a pithy poor pun, but the heady, desperate days before a knockout play off game do strange things to a Football Tragic's brainwaves.

Since the last time they played Perth the Phoenix have picked themselves up, dusted themselves off and marched towards the A-League playoffs, finishing fourth in the ten team league. The fact that they finished fourth is a matter of some pride, not just scraping into a generous play-off quota, but firmly entrenched in the midst of the top six.

A few weeks ago they picked up a record crowd of 19,258 at 'home' in Christchurch. An event which would go along way towards a Cantabrian claim for an A-League spot. However unlikely this may seem you'd have to think that Canterbury would make a good fist of it. Their sporting teams have an unparalled knack of performing when it counts; Their Rugby and Cricket teams in particular have set the standard for domestic success in Aotearoa, and the Englishness of Christchurch lends itself to the leisurely pursuit of all colonial sports, not least of all Football. It would be fantastic if the Nix could cast off the phony war against Perth, and play a real derby against our traditional Southern rivals. The Cantabrian fans would also be loathe to share their team with the rest of the country. Even though Wellington is proudly parochial, and the Phoenix are Harbour City heroes through and through the Yellow Fever are made up of football fans from all over the Country, and are happy to share their team.

Despite the improbable fancy of two NZ teams in the A-League it is in fact Melbourne who will become the first A-League team to get a proper City Derby,when the Melbourne Heart starts beating next season. And why not? To the Melbourne Victory the Phoenix record home crowd of 19,000,is a paltry figure, and still below their season average of 21,105.

So the challenge of restoring NZL's transtasman football dignity remains the sole burden of the Phoenix, for now at least. This weekend Wellington city is fair fizzing at the prospect of sudden death finals footie- this is coupled with a delicious Perth V. Wellington doubleheader at the Stadium. (The Western Force Rugby team take on the Wgtn Hurricanes tonight. How many Perthites are taking in both games I wonder?)

It seems as though the Phoenix home attendance record is set be nixed again as fans flock to the city. My old football coach from Rotorua rung me up saying he is in town for the game and wants to catch up. If this random occurance is anything to go by I'd say a 25,000-30,000 home crowd could be on the cards, as fairweather fans, or those yet to be tempted by the Nix, throw their misgivings to the wind, and join New Zealand's team in the A-League.

So the season comes to ahead tomorrow for the Nix, if Dadi is fit to play I hope he isn't assigned Penalty duties. But if Paul Ifill comes to play with the vision and calmness he has found in recent weeks, and if Manny Muscat keeps his Maltese crosses flying into Tim Brown's educated melon at the far post then the 'Longest Derby' promises to be less one sided this time around.

I think that the Nix will beat Perth tomorrow; Fortress Wellington has been tough to seige this season, but I don't think the Nix have got the goods to trump Melbourne or Sydney if they meet them in the final But as they say in Rugby League, you have to lose a final to win a final, so the Nix first ever taste of playoff footie will be invaluable in their quest for A-League glory.

On a personal note I am about to disappear into the black hole known as the NZ International Arts Festival from this Friday 26 Feb until March 21. I have been working on this Festival as the Education Coordinator, and soon the fruits of my labour will fall from the tree.

I may not return from this journey quite as sane of mind nor as fleet of foot as before. Wish me luck, for the arts can be a dangerous place to play: