Of all the things going on within football in Aotearoa these days, Andy Durante limping off late in the Phoenix’s 3-2 defeat away to Sydney late the other night wasn’t the most immediately memorable. But now that news has come out confirming a “groin adductor injury” which will rule him out of action for 2-3 months, it suddenly seems a whole lot more pertinent.

That’s bad news, man. That’s some white-knuckles-on-the-mouse, gripping-your-phone-a-little-too-hard kind of news. An apparent best case scenario return of eight weeks or so still means zero chance that he’s fit in time for the All Whites qualifiers and the Wellington Phoenix aren’t exactly on holiday over that time either.

All Whites first. This might come as a surprise to some people but since coming off the bench late in his return to the All Whites against Mexico in Nashville in October 2016 – so, pretty much a year ago – Dura’s started 12 of NZ’s 13 internationals. Including all of the Confederations Cup tour. The only game he didn’t play was the 6-1 win over the Solomon Islands, when Tzimopoulos, Boxall and Brotherton started at the back. Themi then played midfield in the return leg and Dura came in for him at the back.

Which suggests that he’s an almost guaranteed member of the starting XI… except it’s worth noting that while he started next to Tommy Smith in the three Confeds games and next to Winston Reid in the Japan international, he’s never played alongside both of them since he returned to the national team fold. Smith’s on his way back to 100% now, playing a couple times for the Ipswich U23s to get his match fitness up. You’ve gotta think that Smith and Reid are essential to the All Whites doing well against Peru. Lock them both in (necessary addendum: *if fit*).

That leaves one starting role and two contenders: Durante and Michael Boxall. Considering that only Mike McGlinchey and Stefan Marinovich have played more times than Boxall under Huddo, that definitely leans things towards MB’s direction. Boxall has also, to be honest, been the better performer of the two in the whites. Durante has had his moments but he’s also looking a little slower these days (understandable) and when he’s had to defend against top quality international players he’s struggled. Granted he did school Ronaldo that one time, so there’s that.

Peru won’t throw as much pace and movement at the All Whites as, say, Japan or Portugal or Mexico did. Not with Paolo Guerrero playing with his back to goal and all that. But they will throw a lot more at them than Adelaide United or New Caledonia can. Point being that the All Whites need to be at full strength to challenge Peru and if the All Whites are at full strength then that doesn’t include Andrew Durante in the XI. Of course, this means they do lose the next dude off the bench if anyone else gets hurt – likely – but they’ll simply have to roll with that one.

Sam Brotherton has played some important games for NZ, he’ll probably come into the squad now. Only one of his starts has come against a non-Oceania team (vs Oman on debut) but put it this way: if he’s starting then it means Reid or Smith or Boxall isn’t and that’s already a crucial blow. Also, not giving up on the potential of Bill Tuiloma starting at CB in these games even if there’s been no indication that Huddo’s plotting that at all.

Thus it’s a tough one for the All Whites but not a massive one. For the Welly Nix, on the other hand, this is reason to panic. Oh but there’s more depth this season? They’ve got other central defenders now! Yeah… there’s a difference between options and depth. The Nix have options but none of them are nearly as good as Andy Durante or Marco Rossi. And Rossi’s already missed a game with a “late groin tweak”. Dura and Rossi haven’t played together yet this season. They won’t for at least two months now.

Last season the Nix started 18 A-League games with both Rossi and Durante and nine games with only one of them. Thankfully they never had to play with neither.

With Rossi & Dura: 18 Gm | 6 W | 4 D | 8 L | +1 GD | 6 CS | 22 PTS
With Rossi / Dura: 9 Gm | 2 W | 2 D | 5 L | -5 GD | 2 CS | 8 PTS

There’s clearly a difference there and it was worst in the four games without Durante, in which the Nix lost 6-1, drew 2-2, lost 3-1 and drew 3-3. Then without him the other day they lost 3-2. The last five games he’s been absent for and they’ve conceded 17 goals and won absolutely none of them (to be fair, when he’s missing there are often a couple other All Whites missing too).

Durante may not be as brilliant these days as he once was but he’s the undisputed leader on that team and Rossi, good as he is, has had issues playing with other defensive partners. Gotta think the language is the main reason for that, fair enough. Here’s hoping he’s been slamming his Duolingo lessons then because not only is he gonna need to get it done beside a new bloke but he’ll have an 18 year old goalie behind him who turned up to training in his school uniform the other day and it doesn’t really matter how good Keegan Smith can be – at 18 years old you’re not asking him to be a leader yet.

Daniel Mullen will be the dude to replace Durante – he’s already done it once this season. Dylan Fox and Ryan Lowry are both still around in case he gets hurt or Rossi’s injury lingers while Tom Doyle has been known to play in the middle in emergencies and Liam Wood looked good in that FFA Cup game out of the reserves. Those are the options. But watching them against Sydney where the back four was in all sorts of chaos doesn’t fill you with confidence.

Honestly, it’s not often you can watch a game without being able to figure out who’s playing in which positions but with Galloway on the left of defence and spending most of his time as far away from the sideline as he could get, watching Tom Doyle playing apparently in the middle but secretly sneaking towards the left like he was playing statues, watching Mullen hanging out on the right looking bored while Sydney attacked down the other side the whole time and then watching Durante trying to fix it all like a traffic conductor who’d wandered into that scene at the end of Blues Brothers with all the cop cars… that was exactly what happened. Defensive minded midfielder Goran Paracki’s arguably now the most important player in the team and he’s played two A-League games.

Argh, man, this is gonna be a tough couple months.

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