Last week was the three year anniversary of the All Whites’ intercontinental World Cup playoffs against Peru. A 0-0 draw in Wellington on 11 November 2017 and then a 2-0 defeat in Lima on 15 November 2017. Right in between those two days on 13 November 2020 was when the All Whites were supposed to be playing against England at Wembley Stadium in London... except that with all the complications of 2020 that game went the way of the Belgium game a month earlier and never actually happened. Instead England had hoped to play Australia or maybe the USA and ultimately ended up playing Ireland, winning 3-0 thanks to goals from Harry Maguire, Jadon Sancho, and a Dominic Calvert-Lewin penalty.

So a bittersweet week of remembrance then. Thinking wistfully of the past whilst also mourning the present, all of which giving you absolutely no idea of what the future is supposed to be. Those Peru games were funny ones. Looking back now it feels both like a missed opportunity and also like the All Whites did about as well as they were ever going to do. With tactical mastermind Anthony Hudson in charge, things were quite defensive with the idea that plucky lil New Zealand could maybe snatch a sneaky one at the end if we kept it close. Ryan Thomas had a famous chance late on in the first game that he couldn’t squeeze inside the post but a 0-0 draw was a more than commendable result there. The tie was always gonna rest on the away leg... and that away leg went exactly as most people predicted.

The All Whites played alright, Peru played a whole lot better. We wanted to make the World Cup but they were desperate to do so. Then-CEO Andy Martin had a right go about military fly-overs and midnight fireworks outside the hotel (something which is seems players have mostly downplayed since then – and anyway this was soon after his infamous ‘hostile’ comments which went down like a lead balloon with the kiwi public – the man was nothing if not tone-deaf) but the only factor in that game that still feels agonising in that what-could-have-been kinda way was Uncle Huddo playing Chris Wood off the bench in both fixtures. He was injured, supposedly. Woodsy’s always backed that up. But this was a place at the World Cup on the line. We don’t know how long he’d have lasted had he started that second leg or if it would have even made a difference but Hudson’s attitude there still rings of overly pragmatic at best, defeatist at worst.

Then again it’s hard to imagine that team ever being able to overcome Peru in Peru. The fact is that despite a handful of really excellent players that squad simply wasn’t good enough. No shame in that, the biggest blow our quest to qualify took was when FIFA did the draw and put us up against a South American team instead of an Asian team like for the 2010 qualifiers. Now, if we could get them again in a year’s time multiple international windows of preparation in between then maybe it’ll be a different story because in the proceeding three years we just so happen to have tapped into what could prove to be a bit of a golden generation... but back then the depth just wasn’t there, so it goes.

These are the thirteen players who started across the two games against Peru and where they’re at now, 36 months later...

• Stefan Marinovic – Still the clear top choice keeper having stabilised himself at club level with a really strong season with the Wellington Phoenix (after a wobbly end with Vancouver Whitecaps and a wobbly entirety at Bristol City)

• Kip Colvey – Played a handful of times in the MLS then retired to be a chemist’s assistant

• Michael Boxall – Just turned 30 and is in arguably the form of his life as a key player for Minnesota Utd in the USA, about to embark on their second straight playoff campaign

• Winston Reid – After two years of injury hell (made worse by managerial comings and goings) at West Ham he was loaned out to Sporting KC in the States where he’s finally got himself back on track playing regular footy again

• Tommy Smith – Went to the USA to link up with old adversary Anthony Hudson, did pretty well, then went back to England and is currently all the way down in League Two with Colchester but is bossing the show at the back there and for the first time since he was at Ipswich seems to be genuinely appreciated at his club

• Deklan Wynne – Still technically a Colorado Rapids player but didn’t play a single minute for the club in 2020 and is coming off contract so who knows where his career will go from here

• Michael McGlinchey – Surprisingly only 33 years old (turns 34 in early Jan) but got iced out at Central Coast Mariners and has since gone back to Scotland where he’s playing for Queen’s Park in Scotland’s League Two so his international days may be behind him now after 54 caps and 5 goals

• Ryan Thomas – Got the big move to PSV, immediately busted his knee, but is back now playing Europa League games and contending for an Eredivisie title and probably playing at the highest level of any kiwi player right now (unless you rate relegation battles in the Premier League ahead of challenging for the title in The Netherlands... which maybe you do, fair enough)

• Clayton Lewis – Never quite got the chances he should have at Scunthorpe so he came back to Auckland City and has since signed with the Wellington Phoenix – has only played once off the bench in the last five All Whites games but the Welly Nix gig should give him a boost

• Kosta Barbarouses – At Sydney FC these days doing the same thing he always does: winning championships. Dude just bagged his fourth with a third different club so nothing’s changed as far as Kosta’s concerned

• Marco Rojas – Had a second stint in Europe where he got blanked in the Netherlands but then was just getting it going in Denmark when the offer came to return to Melbourne Victory where he is now

• Andy Durante – Still hanging in there at club level with Western United but very much retired from internationals

• Bill Tuiloma – Backup centre-back for a strong Portland Timbers squad, playing relatively often and by all accounts an excellent squad member... has reinvented himself in the MLS as a central defender having still been seen as a midfielder back in those November 2017 games

A few casualties from that group, a few fellas who’ve gone on to bigger and better things. Remember that those were the starters though. The best of the best. Filling out the rest of that squad we had: Jeremy Brockie, Themi Tzimopoulos, Shane Smeltz, Glen Moss, Monty Patterson, Dane Ingham, Rory Fallon, and Max Crocombe... plus Chris Wood, obviously.

Other than Wood there is maybe one of those guys who would make a current All Whites squad and that’s Max Crocombe who would only be there as a third-string goalkeeper and even then that’s no guarantee. Three of the others are retired. A couple more might as well be. The others have simply fallen down the ranks. World Cup cycles usually tend to end with a line in the sand but it’s a bit wild to think that of those 22 players five of them have since retired and at least three more are probably considering it. Only nine of them were in Danny Hay’s squad to face Ireland and Lithuania a year ago (including McGlinchey). Stone crazy when you think about it in those terms... luckily a bit of out with the old and in with the new was exactly what this squad needed.

It’s hard to know exactly what an All Whites team would look like at this moment in time. Presumably Danny Hay would have picked squads for the last couple abandoned games, we know he picked a squad for the abandoned games back in March because it’s been revealed that Marko Stamenic was supposed to be a part of them. But those squads were never named publically. However we do have those two games from a year ago to go by and Danny Hay did plant his flag very firmly in the ground there, showing that he was going to lean all the way into this outstanding generation of younger players emerging these days to complement the half-a-squad of established vets that were kicking around in the Anthony Hudson days.

Lots of wasted time as far as the All Whites go but hypothetically speaking that game against England would probably have looked something like this...

That England team is just the team that played against Ireland, by the way. There’s a zero percent chance that Gareth Southgate would have taken the opposition into account at all for a meaningless friendly game against a weaker opposition, he’s just thinking about who needs minutes and what combinations he might try and all that, so whether it’s Eire or Aotearoa it wouldn’t make a difference. In case you’re wondering, these are the subs that Southgate used: Dean Henderson, Tammy Abraham, Ainsley Maitland-Niles, Jude Bellingham & Phil Foden.

As to the All Whites XI, I went back and forth between Rojas and Eli Just on that right wing. It was Just and McCowatt who started the Ireland game and it’s no stretch to imagine Hay picking EJ over the far more experienced Rojas, but I went with the veteran presence because it makes the team look stronger on paper. And yes I realise that had the game gone ahead then it would’ve been a Euro-only squad but it didn’t go ahead so this is already hypothetical so might as well go all in.

How funny would it have been to hear/read the English media entirely underrating some of those kiwi fellas? You already know they’d have looked at this team and seen Winston Reid, Chris Wood, and nine absolute battler no-names (if they even looked at the opposition team at all)... which so long as we didn’t embarrass ourselves would’ve made for some lovely moments on various podcasts over the next few days about how there are some decent little players in that New Zealand side, actually. Followed by the tabloids linking Liberato Cacace to Tottenham and Joe Bell to Fulham in January.

But the game never happened and the All Whites won’t get to play again until at least March when the next international window occurs. They had gone sixteen months between games when they last played, they’ll go at least sixteen months between games by the next time they play. Two games in 32 months is probably long enough missing to be legally classified as a dead person but goddammit that potential team still looks all sorts of exciting. Maybe one day we’ll see it in real life.

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