Abby Erceg’s Retired Again And There Are Questions
Heaps of talking points from the latest Football Ferns squad which has been announced for the friendly against Japan next month. The fact that the game is taking place in Wellington is one of them, as is the quality of the opposition. Rosie White’s back from injury which is awesome. Nadia Olla and Sarah Morton are in their first Ferns squads, good for them. Olivia Chance’s injury means that her meteoric rise of late takes a slight pause and Ria Percival is out hurt too but there are still 11 players with more than 50 caps selected and four with 100+. Oh and Abby Erceg retired again.
Wait… what? Yeah, for real, and if you think that was a dismissive way to bring it up then wait until you see how New Zealand Football brushed it off, waiting until the tenth paragraph of their press release article thingy to casually drop it in, not even permitting the announcement its own sentence. Odd way to go about acknowledging the loss of a former captain and arguably your best player.
To be fair, they did all that 15 months ago when she retired for the first time in an act of protest against the undervaluing of its female players by NZ Football. It was a big deal back then and it probably went a long way towards getting the Ferns to where they are now, having signed a new collective bargaining agreement two weeks ago which brought full pay parity between the All Whites and Football Ferns. Player payments, prize money, image usage rights and travel costs. All even stevens.
And New Zealand Football got plenty of praise for that announcement. It’s believed to be a world first and it definitely got a positive reaction from the players, which is always a great sign. The travel costs were the main factor here since the other three aspects were pretty close to evens already, but even if that makes this largely symbolic, that’s still a good thing. It shows that NZF are paying attention, it’s the formalising of a promise. A little empathy goes a long way.
Abby Erceg was involved in those discussions as a player representative on the NZPFA and therefore will have had a big say in how negotiations unfolded. She also knew about this a couple months ago (and had dropped a hint to USA media ahead of the 2018 NWSL season, which you already knew if you read Flying Kiwis each week, which obviously you should be doing).
She has admitted that they didn’t get everything they were after – higher pay and fully funded travel were on that list – but also that they were never going to realistically be able to squeeze all of that out of a cash-strapped NZ Football. And Abby was definitely pretty chuffed about it all recently when she popped up on a football podcast over in the States (which you can listen to in full in this week’s Flying Kiwis).
Abby Erceg: “It gives us a really good platform to move forward from here. You know, I’ve asked for things in the past and kicked up a bit of a fuss and I think New Zealand Football have stepped forward, come to the plate, with that agreement and I think it’s really positive and really exciting.”
Earlier this year, at the same time as the CBA negotiations were ongoing, she returned to the Football Ferns squad for their two games against Scotland, playing in the second of them. She cited ‘positive environments’ and ‘changing attitudes’ for convincing her to get back at it again. Sounds like everything was moving in the right direction and everyone was in a good place.
So why then has she all of a sudden upped and retired again? We don’t know that for sure because while her first retirement came with a couple very enlightening interviews, this time she’s declined to comment… and NZF clearly declined to offer any context themselves. Just that one throwaway line. Abby does have an extremely successful club career to balance, she wouldn’t be the first player to prioritise the lot that puts food on her table every week ahead of sporadic internationals. As the captain of the North Carolina Courage, she’s a star player in the American NWSL. She lifted the championship there in 2016, was a runner-up last year, and has begun this 2018 season unbeaten (scoring the winning goal last week against Washington. Again: Flying Kiwis). She’s only 28 years old but that’s almost the same age as Paul Scholes was when he chose to concentrate on club/family over England.
Only Abby knows for sure what her decision was based on but it’s worth mentioning that amidst all the happy happy joy joy NZF/Ferns developments of late, there was this one scoop from Fairfax which alleged that things maybe weren’t all breezy within the Ferns environment. In fact they had three different players leaking their frustration at the lack of ‘professionalism’ in the camp that went to Spain for the Scotland games. One was even going to go on the record about it until the PFA reminded them about a little clause in the new CBA that… yeah…
New Zealand Football under Andy Martin has been run like a PR firm even at the best of times, with the organisation trying to spin every bit of news they can into a positive reflection of the work they do for the sport in this country. Sometimes that’s fair and sometimes it isn’t. All the time it feels kinda thirsty - even Andy Martin sharing a director’s box with Vladimir Putin once got the NZF glamour treatment! They love to try control the public’s view of things and they hate criticism in any form, which is why the Anthony Hudson marriage made so much sense since his own personal media relations strategy is extremely similar, all the way down to his Wikipedia edits.
Ferns coach Andreas Heraf spoke to Stuff about the allegations and stressed that he has a good relationship with the team, loves working with them and that maybe it was a case of some players being upset at playing in different positions or not getting much game time. The PFA also denied having heard any complaints.
Now, you’d imagine that the amateur players aren’t the ones surprised by an unprofessional environment, since they live in one. Looking at the teams from those two games, Ali Riley and Ria Percival were two that played in different positions than usual, although both played extremely well in those gigs. Abby Erceg missed the XI for the first game but started the second, same as Anna Green. CJ Bott played the first and not the second. Hannah Wilkinson and Katie Rood only played off the bench. There are players who could be upset, sure. Same as with any national team. For people to want to talk to the media without first even chatting with the Player’s Association seems excessive for a personal gripe purely about minutes.
Although it’s also odd that a coach would come under that much pressure after a single camp away. Andreas Heraf and Gareth Turnbull also took the squad to Thailand but that was on short notice after Tony Readings resigned, so the trip to Spain was his first proper tour as the gaffer. He tried a few things and they didn’t get the results, losing 2-0 on both occasions, which was quite disappointing. Presumably another reason for frustration since he clearly didn’t get the best out them.
Curiously when Abby Erceg came out of retirement, she had some encouraging words to say about Heraf and his management…
Erceg in February: “I've met with Andreas a couple of times and we've had some really good discussions. I like what he's about, I like his philosophies and I think that he's good for the environment.”
We don’t know who tried to chat with the media or why. It’s a different outlet to what Erceg used in Feb 2017 in case you’re looking for patterns, she not necessarily got anything to do with that situation. But her subtle retirement with the announcement of a new squad, which was barely mentioned by the official release, coming so soon after this hinted debacle, really raises a few eyebrows about the wider perspective. Particularly with that borderline fascist gag clause, bloody hell. Next thing they’ll have the Thought Police all up in there.
It’s something to keep an eye on in the future. It’s also a not-so-gentle reminder that progress takes time and a series of pleasantly commendable developments (Kate Shepherd Cup! Two-rounds in the national women’s league! A universal, non-gendered CBA!) don’t all of a sudden mean that everything is sweet as or that there isn’t still more work to do.
But as far as the squad drama goes, it’s hard to know what to think. We always try to side with the players on these issues at The Niche Cache (and DMs are always open if you wanna spin some yarns) yet, without knowing the complete state of affairs, this is confusing. All we have are suggestions of ‘unprofessionalism’ which could mean anything from not enough footballs at training to stuff better labelled under the #MeToo banner.
However as far as the manager goes, Heraf is new in this job. He’s taking over from a guy in Tony Readings who was extremely well-liked but had probably stagnated as a manager. The team wasn’t really progressing anymore and they needed some fresh ideas, which Heraf is capable of producing. Readings, to his credit, saw that and walked away. There’s absolutely going to be some culture shock from that regime change both from players whose positions are no longer as stable as they once were and also from those not used to dealing with a more demanding manager.
That’s going to take a few camps to get used to and it’s not only the players who need to adapt but, more than anyone else, Andreas Heraf will need to adapt. You can’t walk into an established team and tear it up to rebuild it again. Just ask Darije Kalezic how that worked out for him at the Wellington Phoenix. Heraf is gonna need to adjust his methods of coaching and communication to find the balance that these players best respond to, which won’t necessarily be the same as his Austrian U20 lads. That’s all part of coaching and, like that CBA, it might take a bit of back and forth to get there. He’s just had his wake-up call. Next comes his opportunity to make it all work.
Unfortunately he has to do it without the Ferns’ best player but we don’t really know why that is and it’d be impolite to speculate. Who’s got a spare thousand dollars to throw around anyway? Hey maybe that’s NZF’s new plan to fund all this business class travel, just make it up by charging players for every time they call them out in public…
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