The World Cup provided great amounts of joy to all football fans with the colour, the skill, the tactics, the best players on the biggest stage. It's a different feel to the weekly grind of league football, it's players representing their nations with their brothers... but we weren't there.

It's hard to be angry, disappointed or feel left out because the All Whites were simply not good enough against Mexico. Kiwi football fans were realistic, they knew Mexico were pretty good even if the rest of New Zealand dared to dream with relative delusion. I think I speak for a quite a few others when I say that it wasn't that we didn't qualify, but how we went about getting delivered that reality check.

Which brings us to this. Now with a new coach, a seemingly new direction and a crop of young players along with our top flight Flying Kiwis, we have a national football team that oozes hope. NZ Football isn't going backwards, the development of young talent as we've seen in recent years is going well and we have more players doing their thing around the world than ever before. In the past, there have been moments when hope and positive thoughts were immediately put in their place by the realisation that we weren't really pushing through new faces and our best players were the perennial Kiwi battler types. This is a different age and we reckon the hope is justified, we won't be world beaters but we're already in a better position than we were a few years ago which provides a solid platform for the team to build on.

This started with Anthony Hudson being named as coach of the All Whites. With all due respect to Ricki Herbert, a fresh start was needed and we have a coach who appears to be a pretty impressive bloke. Here are the facts: He's the son of 70s Chelsea legend Alan Hudson. Born in America, he played in the West Ham youth system, though his playing career never really took off. He went back to the US where he set his sights on coaching, eventually becoming the youngest person ever to get his UEFA Pro-License (the highest coaching qualification in UEFA). He took a second division Real Maryland side from the worst team in their league to the playoffs, before moving back to England in 2010 to work under Harry Redknapp at Spurs. A short stint with Newport County was followed by a gig with the Bahrain U-23s and Olympic teams, taking them to the final of the Gulf Olympic Cup... a tournament they'd never finished higher than 5th in before. In between tournaments he took the time to study under the tutelage of the likes of Jose Mourinho, Fabio Capello and Brendan Rodgers, and he took over the full national team in 2013. Reportedly he was a candidate for the Denmark job last year but it was New Zealand that headhunted now 33 year old Hudson and it was New Zealand that got their man.

Based on those facts, you come to the conclusion that Hudson is a coach who knows who he is, what he wants to do and how he wants to do it. He's climbed the ranks pretty quickly and you'd have to imagine given his age that he has some exciting yet simple football philosophies.

This selection process must have been a two way street. Surely NZ Football would have wanted a coach who can guide their talented youngsters through international football while Hudson would have been eager to work with young talent. Young talent is something that the All Whites have sometimes lacked, opting to go for the battlers instead. Young talent is something that we now seen to be uncovering in relative abundance.

Look at Ryan Thomas. From a no-name kiwi teen to Dutch Cup Final sensation in the space of a year. You've got Cam Howieson featuring in the academy for EPL side Burnley, Bill Tuiloma doing the same in the Olympic Marseille system. Let's not forget the talent coming through the Wellington Phoenix ranks either, with names like Louis Fenton, Tyler Boyd and Matthew Ridenton looking to follow in the footsteps of former Phoenix U-23 Player of the Year and A-League Player of the Year Marco Rojas, who is poised to make an impact in the Bundesliga with Stuttgart this season.

The All Whites will now be moulded around the stalwarts - Winston Reid, Tommy Smith and Chris Wood. Well they should be, anyway. Common sense and a youthful bias seems to point us in the direction of reducing the reliance on guys like Shane Smeltz and Chris Killen. This is where it gets tricky, take note of the word 'moulded'. The team shouldn't be zoned in on the three lads in England because who knows how often they'll be able to take part, who knows what will happen and relying solely on these guys would be pretty dumb.

Treat them as a bonus ... so don't make a cheap headline when they aren't available. You'd like to think they will be available as often as they can, especially for important games, but reality will differ slightly. The team must be moulded around them, which means that guys must be good enough to fill that void as well as Reid, Smith and Wood being able to slip seamlessly in to the team. It's a balancing act, these guys are our best players so they clearly deserve to be there, but Hudson must make the environment such that they can come and go with little disruption. We must be good enough without them, with them we'll be better.

Hence guys like Andrew Durante become important. The culture of the All Whites needs to be etched in stone, the style, the work ethic, the whole nine yards. Standards don't suddenly get lifted when Winston Reid's at training, nah this must all be in place at every camp for every game. Strong characters ensure that this takes place and Hudson must ensure that there's some guys in the locker room who can keep everyone in line with his style. Luckily we finally have a crop of NZers getting regular professional footy at a decent standard with The Nix to fall back on. Guys that are young, enthusiastic and good enough to make the step up if necessary, whether it be 90 minutes against Tahiti or 15 off the bench vs some European or South American stragglers. Plus, having Hudson as a stand alone national coach and not a scarf juggler like Herbert with his dual Phoenix/All Whites roles will be massively beneficial.

Regular footy. The All Whites must play as many games as they can, simple. A regular fixture against our Australian neighbors must definitely be on the list, but you'd imagine we'd have to earn some respect first of all. Sometimes it felt like games were scheduled around players, that means that games were organised because that was when Reid was going to be able to play or everything was rushed and unrealistically squeezed in to a FIFA window. Nah, just play games. As stated above, treat the inclusion of some players as a bonus and just get our there on the field representing the silver fern. Obviously games in front of home fans would be the ultimate, but we know that's unrealistic. We have to know our current place in world football: we're nothing. Any momentum from our 2010 World Cup has vanished, we've just gotta get in there and give the teams above us what they want - competitive footy. Of course, we won't be running around as world football's whipping boys providing easy competition to anyone who wants it, but we need to build our reputation from the ground up.

To do that we need as many games as possible to give everyone in the frame a go. Give them time to get the game plans on lock, spend time with each other creating a bond and a sense of great pride. It's beneficial on all fronts as the wider group which you would have to think would consist of 30 players or so, need to simply spend as much time together as possible. Then you get these guys on the international shop window, get them out there for the world to see as you never no who is watching. The mindset needs to change from kind of safeguarding our talent, to providing them the opportunity to be scouted.

The more players we get playing overseas, the better the systems to get them playing regularly for the All Whites get. Obviously they get better at footy as well. Everyone wins.

We're a positive group here at the Niche Cache and the All Whites provide plenty of optimism. Young talent, an exciting coach and probably our best group of high quality professionals we've ever had, but things need to be done properly. We could easily find ourselves competing in the next World Cup if business is handled correctly and everything off the field - scheduling, revenue, relationships, etc. - as well as on the field is executed to near perfection. The opportunity is there to consistently punch above our weight, but we could just as easily find ourselves in the footballin' wilderness. We know where we'd like our national football side to be.