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What has New Zealand ever done?

Mar 16, 2015
Former Adelaide United forward Nathan Burns celebrates another goal for Wellington Phoenix.

Former Adelaide United forward Nathan Burns celebrates another goal for Wellington Phoenix.

It might surprise some younger and newer followers of our sport that there was a time when New Zealand might be the team most likely to ruin Australia’s dreams of reaching the FIFA World Cup finals.

Actually when I first turned my eyes to the international game, I assumed the Kiwis must be better than us. They had qualified for the 1982 tournament – the first World Cup I remember – and Australia hadn’t.

We played them a lot in the ‘80s and they seemed to have the edge. Australia managed to wrap up victory in the Oceania qualifiers in 1985 with a 2-0 victory over New Zealand (the opening goal was well scored by a certain Adelaide-born forward called John Kosmina).

But in 1989 a loss in Auckland badly damaged the Socceroos’ campaign for the 1990 World Cup, though it would be Israel, not New Zealand’s All Whites, who would go on to win the Oceania group (as you know, Israel is a few hundred kilometres east of Brisbane).

After that the Socceroos mostly dominated trans-Tasman meetings but the late ‘90s would see the old rivalry on a different stage.

Following the example of the admission of the (then) Auckland Warriors to the (then) Australian Rugby League, Soccer Australia, the governing body of the time, allowed a team from New Zealand to join the National Soccer League.

This was a surprisingly good idea as New Zealand had the potential to expand the competition’s market.

Unfortunately the good idea was badly executed (though that’s still better than bad ideas that are badly executed, such as another brainwave of the time – bringing teams linked to AFL clubs Carlton and Collingwood into the NSL).

After a couple of promising seasons for the Auckland-based club, the oddly named Football Kingz (don’t ask) began to struggle on and off the pitch. Less than three years after their debut, Soccer Australia’s revolving door delivered a new chairman who wanted them out of the league (ahhh those were the days).

It hardly mattered. Two years later the NSL itself was gone and that chairman didn’t even last that long.

Having a team from another nation in your league is unusual around the world. Nevertheless, when the Hyundai A-League kicked off in 2005 with just eight teams, our new overlords kept a team from across the ditch, except now they weren’t just in another country, they were in another region.

Technically Australia didn’t leave the Oceania confederation to join Asia until 1 January 2006. But the announcement that it was likely to happen had already been made before the A-League kicked off (we heard the news 10 years ago, in March 2005).

An Oceania team in an Asian league? Suddenly it made as much sense as a Moroccan team in the Spanish league, though those nations are a lot closer together.

The Asian Football Confederation decided that the New Zealand Knights (a reincarnation of the Kingz) couldn’t qualify for the Asian Champions League because “they are not recognised as an AFC club”.

But there was never any risk of the Knights stealing the show. In the first A-League season they managed just one win. Their second season wasn’t much better but even before it ended, it was clear that it would be their last. Football Federation Australia revoked the Knights’ licence “due to an insolvency event” but made sure the team could complete the season.

A few months later a new club, Wellington Phoenix, rose from the ashes.

Despite another wooden spoon going to New Zealand in Wellington’s first season, Phoenix would finally remind us why we’d included Kiwis in our league in the first place. Attendances were higher than those that the Knights achieved, and the team became competitive.

In 2010 a capacity crowd saw Phoenix win a home match in the finals series and the team fell just one match short of reaching the grand final. A few months earlier, New Zealand’s national team qualified for the World Cup finals for the first time since 1982. Having Ricki Herbert (who played in the ‘82 team) coaching both the Phoenix and the All Whites would have helped. Several members of New Zealand’s squad played, or had recently played, for Wellington.

Suddenly white was the new black and Kiwis temporarily forgot that they worshipped one of their other national sporting teams.

And they were heroic at the 2010 tournament. The All Whites, grouped with Slovakia, Italy and Paraguay, were expected to be easy-beats. Instead they managed to draw every game. It wasn’t quite enough to put them through to the next round but New Zealand did leave the tournament with the distinction of being its only undefeated team.

Towards the end of a difficult 2012-13 season, Herbert resigned as Wellington coach but the club showed its ambition by hiring Ernie Merrick, the most successful coach in the A-League’s short history. Some excellent players have joined since Merrick’s appointment too.

Wellington is now top of the A-League ladder and, with just a few rounds left, the Kiwi team is threatening to win its first silverware. The club is well run and there’s no likelihood of “an insolvency event” any time soon.

Still, the Oceania-team-in-Asian-league oddity continues to cause uncertainty. This is why, last year, every A-League club, except Phoenix, had its licence extended until 2034.

Wellington’s licence expires next year and, before it can be renewed, approval from the Asian Football Confederation and FIFA is needed.

This could be the tricky part. The AFC hasn’t always been too keen on the arrangement. With reports during January’s Asian Cup that some Asian nations, particularly Gulf nations, might want Australia out of the confederation, do we need to make sure that they don’t have an excuse to justify our removal?

But if the FFA sacrifices Phoenix, it faces another problem. It wants the A-League to increase by two teams. Doing that will be challenging enough; with no Wellington, finding a third suitable candidate might be too difficult.

Though some observers think otherwise, Phoenix does provide a net benefit to the league. Its market (and potential market) is not just confined to New Zealand’s capital city. It’s definitely bigger than what the Gosford-based Central Coast Mariners offer.

Recently Damien de Bohun, head of the A-League, said that Wellington’s future would be resolved in “the next few months”.

It needs to happen more quickly. Wellington has just extended Ernie Merrick’s tenure for another three years, taking it beyond the expiration of the current licence, and the club deserves to have the certainty to plan all things beyond 2016.

Paul Marcuccitti’s soccer column is published in InDaily on Mondays. He is a co-presenter of 5RTI’s Soccer on 531 program which can be heard from 11am on Saturdays.

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