NZ’s soccer success pushes limelight on Pacific

Peter Rees



Who would have thought that the All Whites could transform the New Zealand’s rugby-mad population into a football-mad nation?
That’s exactly what they did in South Africa at the FIFA World Cup where New Zealand finally returned to soccer’s biggest stage after 28 years of waiting.
History making results against 2006 world champs Italy (1-1), Paraguay (0-0) and Slovakia (1-1) put New Zealand on the football map. Nobody expected a team rated 1000-1 outsiders and the “worst team at the World Cup” to go through undefeated. They did not make it to the second round, but they returned home in June with the moral victory of finishing above the Italians on the points table.
Suddenly everyone wanted to know them, even New Zealanders who in the past never gave the round ball game a passing thought.
Devout rugby fans were changing codes, as one media poll found out. New Zealand is a nation where rugby is sewn into the social fabric. Not even the All Blacks garnered the kind of interest the All Whites did.
As a member of the Oceania Football Confederation, the region’s governing body for soccer, the spotlight not only fell on the All Whites, it also fell on their Pacific neighbours.
Since 2006 when Australia jumped ship to the Asian Football Confederation (because of the perceived lack of competition in Oceania), OFC has been walking a tightrope with FIFA, the all powerful world body. Oceania is the weakest confederation and unlike other confederations does not have direct entry to the World Cup.
Australia qualified for the 2006 World Cup via the South American route, while New Zealand did the job against Asian qualifier Bahrain last year. Beating Bahrain proved to FIFA the All Whites were not the easy beats from past FIFA world championships.

ISLAND SUCCESS
Last year, when there was talk that FIFA might take away direct qualification for Oceania in other FIFA tournaments, New Zealand rose again. Their national U17 team advanced to the second round of the FIFA world champs that year.
This year, more New Zealanders rallied behind soccer when its only professional franchise, the Wellington Phoenix went deep into the Australia National Soccer League playoffs.
But the Kiwis haven’t been the only country flying the Oceania flag in recent months.
Papua New Guinea created history in May this year when its champion club side Hekari became the first Pacific nation to win the O-League (Oceania Club Championship) by beating Waitakere FC from Auckland, New Zealand in the home and away series final (4-2 aggregate), thus qualifying for the FIFA World Club Champs later this year, making PNG the first Pacific nation to qualify for that tournament.
Furthermore, the Solomon Islands have represented Oceania at the FIFA Beach World Cup for the past four years and held their own against the world’s best.
The next step is trying to upset the All Whites at the Oceania Nations Cup and World Cup qualifying level. That takes forward planning, money, but more importantly players and the right people steering them.
However, the OFC deputy general secretary, Greg Larsen, says the All Whites’ efforts have greatly boosted the region’s profile. More importantly, they have shown the island nations that nothing is impossible.
“I think over the last 18 to 24 months, there’s been a huge change in football in the Oceania region. I think while New Zealand is doing extremely well in the World Cups, there’s an opportunity for every island in the Oceania region to be successful,” he says.
With NZ$11.3 million banked into New Zealand football’s coffers, courtesy of FIFA, the islands nations have all the motivation in the world to dream big.
Despite the lack of exposure to top level competition, administrators have worked hard to develop players. Getting more players into professional leagues around the world will ensure this momentum carries forward.
New Zealand only has 25 professional players—only one you could call a bonafide star, All Whites captain Ryan Nelsen, who plays for Blackburn Rovers in the glamorous English Premier League.
“A team of millionaires has just been humbled by a team of semi-professionals and amateurs where one of their players works at a bank,” a commentator summed up after the All Whites’ upset draw against Italy.
The Pacific islands have had a handful of professional players.  New Caledonia’s Christian Karembeu is the most successful. He helped France win the 1998 World Cup and enjoyed a successful career in Europe.
Tahiti has had several players play in the French leagues, while Samoa can claim Australia Socceroos star Tim Filiga Cahill as one of their own after he represented his mother’s country of birth as a teenager in the 1990s. Cahill was the hero for Australia at the 2006 World Cup, and he scored a goal against Serbia at this year’s tournament. But it wasn’t enough to help the Socceroos progress to the second round.

DREAMING BIG
Playing in the rich leagues of Europe is the dream of every young island player, but the reality is the chances of that happening are slim. Unless a player’s natural skills get exposure to the top coaches, facilities, resources, competitions and training environment, that potential goes unrealised.
The All Whites proved that theory wrong to a degree. But for the long-term future of Oceania, creating these kinds of pathways will be crucial.
There are a sprinkling of islands players based in Australia and New Zealand. Players such as Solomon Islander Benjamin Totori, the star striker for Waitakere City, are making an impact. But the New Zealand Football Championship and Australia’s National Soccer League are hardly in the same class as the English Premier League or the Spanish Primera. Getting more island players in Europe should be a priority.
Many New Zealanders will now believe the All Whites are a shoo-in to represent Oceania in World Cup qualification. The reason is they have more of their players playing in top leagues. The islands nations have pulled off the odd upset over New Zealand in the past. But the local leagues are not enough for our players to maintain a consistent threat to the Kiwis.
Never-the-less, the region’s football landscape is changing. It is hard to escape the irony that New Zealand’s national soccer team is called the All Whites. To many New Zealanders, the All Whites are the antithesis of their rugby counterparts, the All Blacks—a team filled with Maori and Pacific island players.
But times have changed. The All Whites team’s newest poster boys are players of Maori descent; defender Winston Wiremu Reid, who scored the equalising goal against Slovakia. Then there is rangy striker Rory Fallon, who scored the winning goal against Bahrain which clinched New Zealand’s place at the World Cup. He also happens to be the son of Kevin Fallon, the assistant coach of the famous 1982 All Whites side. The 1982 side was New Zealand’s first team to play in a World Cup and contained a solitary Maori player Wynton Rufer, who is still regarded as New Zealand’s greatest soccer export.
“Rory’s goal [against Bahrain last year] was the one that got us to the World Cup and then the next Maori (Reid) turns up—bang in the back of the net. Unbelievable. History in the making,” Rufer said.
Now, there are more Maori players in the All Whites than the All Blacks! In June, while the All Whites were becoming the darlings of the media across the other side of the world, back at home the All Blacks taking on Ireland featured only two Maori players. The All Whites have four (Jeremy Christie and Leo Bertos are the other Maori players).
The New Zealand media epitomised the surge in popular opinion. Editors put the All Blacks on the back page and ran front page headlines on the All Whites instead. It was a far cry from six years ago when New Zealand football was in turmoil, on and off the field. The All Whites were embarrassed by Vanuatu 4-2 in the Oceania Nations Cup in Adelaide in 2004. Then they had to watch the Solomon Islands play off against Australia for a place in the 2006 FIFA World Cup.

BROWNING OF THE GAME
New Zealand’s rising soccer fortunes have coincided with the “browning” of its soccer teams, more so at the age group level and women’s teams. That has filtered into the senior national sides. And it has also coincided with the “browning” of the region’s soccer decision makers. Since Tahitian Reynald Temarii’s arrival as president of OFC in 2004 with Cook Islander Tai Nicholas, the OFC general-secretary (OFC) as his right man, Oceania has made more advances than any time since its inception in 1966.
They may be called the All Whites, but the team is definitely not.
Reid, of Te Rarawa and Tainui descent, left New Zealand to live in Denmark as an 11-year-old. But he is fiercely proud of his Maori heritage. A popular Youtube clip shows him practising the haka with fellow Maori team-mates; Fallon, Christie and Bertos.
Soccer in New Zealand has long been dominated by the Europeans because of the huge British influence and the large number of English expats who have played and coached there. The game has often been tagged a “white’s only” sport. As a result rugby union was the game of choice for generations of Maori and Pacific islands youth born or resident in New Zealand. 
But increased migration to New Zealand and the country’s evolving multiculturalism is starting to change those perceptions. Recent statistics, released by SPARC, a government funded agency which allocates funding to New Zealand sports bodies, say not only are more youth playing soccer than rugby, Maori players—male and female—now make up 22 percent of the country’s elite soccer teams. With the Pacific population likely to double in New Zealand by 2050, the “browning” of soccer is not going to be a flash in the pan.
Rufer is acknowledged as the first Polynesian soccer star for New Zealand. A year after the 1982 World Cup, Colin Tuaa became the first Pacific island player to make the All Whites team. His career which spanned from 1983-1991 saw the south Auckland-raised Samoan travel the world and go on to further glory as a coach in New Zealand’s national league. He was recently in Samoa as CEO of the national association.
In the 1990s and 2000s, players of Maori and Pacific descent to wear the All Whites shirt included Harry Ngata (Maori) and Kris Bouckenhooge (Cook Islands).
However, Reid is the man of the moment right now. The lanky 6’3” defender wants more Maori to follow in his footsteps.
“If I can help other young Maori players to start off in soccer, that could be good. Hopefully, I can help New Zealand football in that,” he says.
Christie said he had always tried to encourage Maori to take up soccer and stick with it.
“I feel the same way as Winston,” Christie says. “There are Maori kids playing the game now, but they seem to give it away when they are 12 or 13. I’m not sure why. But it’s the same with the Pacific Island kids—they go and play rugby and rugby league.”
But New Zealand football chief executive, Michael Glading admits the time is now for football to rise to the occasion and the All Whites feats in South Africa won’t go unnoticed by the world. “I think the landscape has changed and I believe it’s changed permanently,” he says.

• Wellington-born Samoan, Peter Rees was the Oceania Football Confederation’s first appointed Media Officer from 2002-2004.