Posts Tagged ‘new zealand’

Heskey does little to soothe Wellington woes

Posted: February 3, 2013 by onefootinthegame in Uncategorized
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It is fair to say that football is not New Zealand’s sport of choice. Indeed, if you happen to hear the word being bandied about at all in a Kiwi pub or workplace, it’s more than likely being used in reference to that other game – you know, the one that New Zealand tends to be just a little bit good at.

It’s not, therefore, the most accommodating country for a football-mad Englishman to reside in. From the requirement to crawl out of bed in the middle of the night if you want to catch any live Premier League action to the absence of any professional team in its most populous city Auckland, football in NZ can be a lonely desert of an obsession for those that dare to follow it.

If, then, the opportunity arises to watch a real live game with proper players who actually get paid to get their boots muddy every weekend, it’s not one you turn down in a hurry.

The game in question was an Australian A-League fixture pitting home side Wellington Phoenix (NZ’s only professional club) vs Newcastle Jets of New South Wales. If the latter name is ringing any bells, it’s probably because you read in some deep-buried summer news article about the club’s marquee signing of the Leicester-born behemoth that is Emile William Ivanhoe Heskey.

As an England fan, I’ve always had my fair share of misgivings about Heskey, even if he does have one of the finest middle names in football. How many times have St George’s flags sunk in quiet despair at the announcement of Heskey’s name on an England team sheet? How long did the nation suffer the ignominy of having to watch us field a striker so hapless at that murky business of scoring goals?

And yet, for all the poverty of his goal scoring record for both his country and all three of the Premier League clubs he represented after leaving Liverpool in 2004, it was always difficult to dislike Heskey either as man or player. On the pitch, he was a brutally effective ball-winning colossus who seemed to bring out the best in his more technically gifted strike partners. Michael Owen loved to play alongside him; even Wayne Rooney became more productive in his shadow. And off the field, he has always come across as shy, honest, humble even – basically, everything that John Terry isn’t.

So when a weekend trip to Wellington happened to coincide with Heskey and team’s visit to the Westpac Stadium, how could I refuse a look in?
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There was inevitably something rather surreal about the experience of watching a football match in blistering sunshine as the English game struggles through another bitter winter on the other side of the world. And being accustomed to heaving grounds and ticket touts, it felt a bit wrong to be able to waltz up to a queue-free ticket office only fifteen minutes before kick-off and join a crowd of little more than six thousand in a stadium built for six times that number.

Nevertheless, I was happy to be sitting watching a live football game for the first time in what felt like an eternity, even if the standard of play was comparable to third division or fourth division back home. And that I got to witness that rarest of spectacles – an Emile Heskey goal to draw the game level after the Phoenix took an early lead through Louis Fenton – certainly provided some extra spice.

That Heskey stood out as his team’s best player – despite putting in what was, in many ways, a typical performance of missed chances and balls knocked down to no one in particular – was a fair indication of this league’s quality. But we shouldn’t be churlish about an emerging football market that is very much on the up. With Italian World Cup winner Alessandro Del Piero drawing in the crowds over in Sydney and Heskey providing plenty of interest for the Antipodes’ hefty British ex-pat population at least, the A-League is improving with every season.

For New Zealand’s sole representative club, things look a little grimmer. On the morning of the game, an impassioned article appeared in Wellington’s Dominion Post beseeching the locals to turn out and support the Phoenix at Sunday’s game. Attendances have not been stellar in recent months, averaging little over 7,000, and there has even been the suggestion of the team having to abandon the Westpac for a much smaller ground in the suburb of Newton that seats only a 1,000 and has no floodlights or car park. By any club’s standards, such a move would be a huge blow.

An upturn in fortunes on the pitch would certainly help matters. Despite their best efforts, the Phoenix were unable to find another goal after Heskey’s downward header – his only real chance in a game where he often looked exasperated at the poor final balls lofted in his general direction by his team mates – brought the game level, leaving them rock bottom of the ten team table after 18 games.

Hope continues to be placed in Paul Ifill, the Phoenix’s own marquee signing of 3 years ago and former winger with Crystal Palace and Sheffield United. Still only 33, Ifill has enjoyed prolific form in front of goal during his stint with the club, notching up 30 strikes in 80 games. And he was lively against the Jets, creating chances from out wide and getting into threatening positions in the box on a number of occasions. The real signs of promise, though, came from 18 year old Tyler Boyd, a home-grown left winger who showed enough pace and trickery down the left to suggest he could be a Phoenix star of the future – unless, as is always the worry for clubs such as this, someone bigger comes in to poach him.

While the Phoenix supporters left the ground no doubt disgruntled by their team’s latest failure to win, I walked out into the early evening sunshine a happy man. Whatever the quality of the game, nothing beats the thrill of live football and in a country where 90% of sports conversations revolve around the dreaded All Blacks, you have to be grateful for small mercies.

Written by Jonny Barker

 

All white on the night

Posted: July 13, 2010 by onefootinthegame in World Cup 2010
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If you had popped down to your local bookies before the World Cup began and put a bet on New Zealand to be the only team to leave South Africa undefeated, not only would you have got very long odds, but by the time you left the store the proverbial men in white coats would have been waiting outside ready to whisk you off to the nearest asylum.

Along with North Korea and Honduras, the All Whites started their campaign in South Africa as huge underdogs. In a group featuring the World champions Italy, a well-drilled Paraguay and a Slovakian side that impressed in qualification, most pundits saw the Kiwis as whipping boys and predicted a swift return to New Zealand without a point, or even a goal, to show for their efforts.

The omens were not good. In last year’s Confederations Cup the All Whites were trounced 5-0 by Spain and celebrated a goalless draw with Iraq like they had just won a particularly lucrative lottery syndicate. Their manager, Ricki Herbert, was also a survivor from the 1982 World Cup squad that failed to pick up a point from their three group games in Spain.

On top of that, New Zealand didn’t even have a professional league, with their only professional team, Wellington Phoenix, (also managed by Herbert) plying their trade in Australia’s much maligned A-League. With Robbie Fowler still a star turn Down Under, it’s easy to see why.

The players that made up their threadbare squad almost made a mockery of the term journeymen, with an unattached veteran pulling the strings in midfield, a former AFC Wimbledon striker leading the line and a full-time banker, ahem, looking to cash in on their underdog status. Only the All White’s captain, Ryan Nelsen of Blackburn Rovers, was playing at the top-level week in week out, with strikers Rory Fallon and Chris Killen plying their trade in the second tier of English football.

When their Antipodean neighbours were put to the sword by a rampant Germany in their opening fixture, fears grew that New Zealand would suffer the same fate as they prepared to face a Slovakian team that edged a tough qualification group ahead of Slovenia and the Czech Republic.

To the surprise of many observers, New Zealand acquitted themselves well against the technically gifted Slovaks, defending resolutely and passing the ball around in a way that England could only dream of. The match may not have set pulses racing (like Shakira had in the opening ceremony), as two unfancied teams slugged it out in the afternoon sun, but their was certainly no lack of effort or organisation from the All Whites. Winston Reid and Ryan Nelsen were outstanding at the back, coping admirably with the dangerous Robert Vittek and the speedy Vladimir Weiss, while Simon Elliott provided much-needed energy and experience in the middle of the park.

When Slovakia took the lead early in the second-half, New Zealand were expected to crumble and allow the Slovaks to pick up their first win at a World Cup. But the All Whites sensed a record of their own was within their grasp as they searched for an unlikely equalizer. It duly came in the fifth minute of stoppage time, courtesy of a glancing Winston Reid header. Cue delirium on the sidelines and in the stands, as the Kiwis celebrated their first ever point in a World Cup finals.

Next up though was Italy, where normal service would be resumed. Or so we thought. The Azzurri had laboured to a point in their opener against Paraguay and were a pale shadow of the side that lifted the World Cup four years earlier. Still, they had some world-class operators like Danielle De Rossi in their ranks who would eventually break the All Whites’ stubborn resistance.

But Ricki Herbert’s side had other ideas, and even had the temerity to take an unlikely lead through Shane Smeltz’s close-range strike, albeit from an offside position. The Italians were understandably livid, but were later awarded a dubious penalty to level matters so could have few complaints at the final whistle. The heroes of the hour were skipper Ryan Nelsen, who defended the New Zealand goal like it was Helm’s Deep, and the All Whites’ goalkeeper Mark Paston, who produced a series of stunning saves to keep the Italians at bay. West Brom’s Chris Wood was inches away from one of the biggest shocks of World Cup history when he shook of the attentions of an ailing Fabio Cannavaro and steered his shot just wide of the post in the dying minutes. The result was undoubtedly the greatest in the country’s footballing history and poured scorn on those mean-spirited commentators who suggested that New Zealand had no right to be at the World Cup after qualifying from a group featuring such football behemoths as Fiji and New Caledonia.

Going into their third game, New Zealand were level on points with Italy and above Slovakia and had a real chance of progressing beyond the group stage. In the end though, they came up just short, playing out a bore draw with Paraguay in a match that demonstrated their obvious attacking limitations and prompted a spike in the popularity of watching paint dry.

Despite their exit at the group stage, New Zealanders can be more than proud of a group of players who punched well above their weight on the world stage and were the only country to leave South Africa with their unbeaten record intact, a fact set to be immortalised in pub quizzes across the land. Spain may have picked up the trophy,  but New Zealand take home the bragging rights from the 2010 World Cup.