2017 was a massive year for football in New Zealand. Headlined of course by the All Whites and their World Cup qualifiers against Peru, plus the Confederations Cup trip, but there was plenty going on all across the park. There was an Under-20 World Cup and an Under-17s one, both of which featured New Zealand teams. The Football Ferns went back to the Cyprus Cup and also toured America and Thailand. Team Wellington won the NZ Premiership again, Auckland City went to another Club World Cup. The Wellington Phoenix… did some stuff too.

Lots of positives but also lots of change, change which will have to be dealt with in 2018. The Phoenix picked up a new manager and replaced half their squad and we’re all watching now how comfortably that transition has gone (clue: not very). So, yeah, here’s hoping that the All Whites and Football Ferns can do a little better with that as they each begin new eras of team management.

The Fernies have already sorted their stuff out with Andreas Heraf taking over on a permanent basis, with Gareth Turnbull assisting. That was the combo that took them to Thailand and while it seems like the obvious answer, the obvious answer is often the best one. No worries. There is a question about how well Heraf will be able to juggle this job with his role as NZ Football’s Technical Director but he’d know that better than anyone else and he took the job, fair play to him. Nice to see a visible NZF employee who’s actually enthusiastic about it all, aye?

Yet while the Ferns sorted out Tony Readings’ sudden departure nice and quickly, the All Whites have done the opposite with Anthony Hudson’s replacement despite having plenty of hints beforehand that Huddo was on his way out. As if the blatant logic of Hudson moving on up after winning the public relations game (globally, if not in Aotearoa) during his moments in the spotlight in 2017 wasn’t enough for NZF to get the picture then the premature reports of his impending deal with the Colorado Rapids ahead of the Peru games should have confirmed the same conclusion.

But nah, instead all the chat was about how Andy Martin was confident that Hudson would re-sign with the team. If Martin honestly believed that then he was the only one, more likely he just wanted it known that they’d made an effort. Then Hudson joined the Rapids with all the multimedia fanfare he will have wanted – graduating from powerpoint presentations to youtube sitdowns – and he took Darren Bazeley with him as an assistant. Jase Kim as well, the All Whites video analyst. Rumour is that Neil Emblen might join them.

So there go four influential folks from NZ Football while the All Whites are left untouched and unwashed on the back porch like last year’s muddy football boots. That’s not to say that they’re being completely ignored, NZF have fronted up the cash to bring in “sporting recruitment specialists Global Elite Sports to undertake the search to find the successor to Anthony Hudson”. A shortlist is being compiled roughly now with an appointment expected before the March international window.

The Ferns had a convenient replacement ready and available who had even-more-conveniently already begun the process as the interim boss a few weeks earlier. No point in wasting any time with it then, especially not when several players had already expressed their positive impressions of Heraf as a manager. It’s worth saying again that while Tony Readings was a well-liked dude who guided this Ferns team through the difficult transition from amateur to professionalism as women’s football grew, and continues to grow, worldwide, his results in major tournaments always left a little to be desired - and so did his tactics. That’s not necessarily a criticism because they needed a manager like him for those times. With so many pro players around the world and an increasing expectation on their performances, they now need a different manager for different times.

What Heraf and Turnbull did in the second game against Thailand, orchestrating a 5-0 win after frustratingly drawing 0-0 in the earlier game, showed that the new Footy Ferns are able to shake things up with their style of play in order to get results. They looked at the first game, made the necessary adjustments (like Ali Riley playing as a winger and Ria Percival getting two games in the midfield) and thoroughly beat Thailand by five goals away from home. Hardly the same as doing that to Germany or France or America but you’ve gotta start somewhere. That’s all very exciting and it sounds like we might see them in action against Scotland in March, roughly a year after losing 3-2 to them at the Cyprus Cup. Spell it out now: B-A-R-O-M-E-T-E-R.

There’s a possibility that the All Whites are in action in March too, judging by the hint of the March international window appointment. But then that might just be a red herring because Andy Martin also made it very clear that NZF are running on financial fumes and that we shouldn’t be holding our breath for too many extra-curricular All Whites games in the near future. The four year World Cup qualifying cycle cost NZ$9m according to claims. That’s a lotta cash-money. Not making the World Cup, not getting to play against Lionel Messi in the qualifier… those kinda things probably don’t cover all that and getting kiwi sports organisations to pay for stuff out of pocket is pretty much a Sisyphean task. You know, as if the All Whites playing games, particularly in New Zealand, isn’t good for the game or whatever.

Well, we didn’t make the World Cup and now here we are. Living in the timeline that’s been promised fewer All Whites games. First thing here is that they never play at home anyway unless they have to so we’re not losing a whole lot. As it happens the All Whites haven’t hosted a non-competitive international since South Africa drew 0-0 in May 2014 in Auckland (Mount Smart Stadium, to be specific). Before then it was a 3-2 loss to Jamaica in February 2012 and back in October 2010, in the aftermath of the 2010 World Cup, they hosted Honduras and Paraguay.

Yeah so taking away a fixture that we haven’t had in close to four years and only get on average every two years anyway is like telling the kids that they been so naughty that they won’t have another Christmas until December. No bloody kidding. Across Anthony Hudson’s 27 matches in charge of the AWs he only had four home games – all World Cup qualifiers. However they did get a few healthy friendlies, most recently against Japan but there was also the trip to USA to play the Americans and the Mexicans, plus the pre-Confeds games against Northern Ireland and Belarus. Oh and who could forget the first six games of Uncle Tony’s All Whites, when they undertook a complete tour of Asia over fourteen months.

The host team is coughing up the host costs, so presumably the All Whites can still expect a few overseas friendlies. That’s best for everyone at this stage since the fans can’t really be deprived something they barely ever had while NZF saves money and still gets games on the calendar and players based on the other side of the world don’t have to travel half as far. That’s a decent compromise.

But they have to play. They have to keep getting that team in camp and building on what Hudson left behind. They’re paying to hire a genuinely qualified coach and any self-respecting coach needs games to develop their team towards success. Whoever they hire is gonna be demanding this. Hudson demanded this. It might be that they don’t end up playing until the mid-year when they can latch onto the pre-World Cup hype but a footy team has to play footy. The All Whites more than most teams – we’ve seen the gulf between Oceanian opposition and teams like Mexico and Peru, the kinds of teams that the All Whites need to be able to beat to compete at and in major tournaments. They have to be playing against that standard of team as often as possible if they’re serious about any of this.

That’s, umm… that’s a bit of an issue here. It’s hard to say how serious they are at all given the many blunders of recent years. Not because they aren’t trying but more because it kinda seems like there’s a level of feigned dignity about NZF that prevents them from doing anything that can’t be churned through the PR Machine.

So at least they’ve hired some pros to find the candidates for the next All Whites manager, rather than doing it themselves and inevitably trying to convince us why the cheapest candidate was the best fit for the brightest future and all that bollocks. And say what you will about Hudson taking all his favourite coaches out of the NZF system but, like, did you really want Darren Bazeley in the mix for the AWs gig? Not really, tbh. Nor Neil Emblen either.

As for the gutting of the youth coaching, Danny Hay summed that one up best when he quit the U17s gig. It’s a job you get to do properly for maybe six weeks a year and Danny Hay would rather be working on the ground floor, spinning his yarns about kiwi players at Eastern Suburbs. And, you know, that says a lot when someone is that committed to developing kiwi players that he no longer wanted to coach the U17s. Both the U20s and U17s boys teams are without managers right now… rather than complain about the ex-English pros that buggered off maybe those positions instead are primed for fresh kiwi managers to step into? Danny Hay’s gotten his start that way. Someone else’s turn now.

There are no U20/U17 World Cups this year anyway. Qualifying tournaments in Tahiti and the Solomon Islands but no World Cups. The U20s will always be a major step on the ladder because most of those players are either on professional contracts already or are on the verge of them. The U17s though, it’s not quite the same. They’re young enough that players who miss out can overlap those that get picked, they’re young enough that they’re not yet committed to the life of a footballer. Plus there’s the usual thing with NZ Football about mostly picking those who are IN THE SYSTEM already. Let’s move on.

Both the women’s U17 and U20 teams are competing at World Cups in 2018, that’s something to look forward too – particularly with the Ferns embracing a few younger players recently. That U20s team will have some full internationals in it. Gareth Turnbull is still coaching that team too, just as he’s still heading the Football Ferns Development Programme in its second year. There’s even talk that Abby Erceg might be back in the Ferns this year.

Funny how this seems to be a trend. All the women’s teams seem to be in great positions to grow and succeed while the men’s teams are stuck in purgatory right now. Some of that will be resolved in the first few months of the year, some of it will not be. But even if there are no All Whites games to stroll down the road and have a watch of, at least there’s always the NZ Premiership and the Wellington Phoenix.

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