(Real) Warning: The video below contains large amounts of excited and relieved explicit language.
2.5 years ago, I posted a youtube clip of the friendly between Wales and the All Whites on here. The game itself, played halfway around the world and for no particular trophy, was hardly broadcast about, even in NZ. I think the footage I put up was a TV3 news report - which has since then been taken down for copyright violation. Its nearly impossible to find footage of the game online that wasn't from some bloke's digital camera.
But obscure as it was, that game was a turning point. It was the dawn of Shane Smeltz's blossoming career (he nabbed both goals in a 2-2 draw), another piece in the puzzle that brought us to November 14th, 2009.
Incidentally, Wales was ranked around 20 places higher than us at the time (but to be honest FIFA rankings mean nothing below #50, and not a lot above it either) and sporting such famous names as Ryan Giggs and Craig Bellamy.
New Zealand's World Rank history has some rather unrealistic topography
It was also the first time I really started paying attention to the state of the national game. And suddenly, Wellington got a pro football team. We started seeing more regular appearances of national level footballers. New Zealand qualified for the playoff against the fifth placed Asian team. We nearly beat Italy. We drew with Iraq, previous Asian champions. The team started to look more like a team and less like a bunch of guys flown in to bump into each other on the field.
And now we're going to the World Cup.
When someone asks me about 2009 years on, the heading picture is the first thing that will come to my mind. It's a picture that says Victory. It's a picture that shows joy and excitement. But it's also a picture that says "now, have I got your attention?" Even moreso, "I better damn well."
More than enough has been blogged, spoken and broadcast about the game for me to go into an analysis here, and sadly even the idiotic arguments "the All Whites didn't have to do much to get there, European teams would kill for our route" and "Rugby vs. Soccer: Is New Zealand undergoing a shift in sporting interest?" But it's so refreshing to have all this after a big fat nothing for so long. The media didn't care. The public were ignorant to the whole thing. But now everyone's listening. Mark Paston and Rory Fallon are household names. And I'd take all the overkill in opinionated journalism you can muster if it means football is on NZ's radar. Then someday, maybe not today or tomorrow, you'll be able to read the headline: All Whites 1:0 England/Brazil/Italy/you get the idea.
Sorry, the point of this post was actually to show you the chaos that was our excitement at the moment of NZ's qualification. Sure, it's nothing on what was going on at the stadium, but I think we did them proud.
Go the All Whites.
