Football Ferns In World Cup Qualifying, Phase Two: The Reaction
The purpose of these last two Football Ferns international windows has been to qualify for the World Cup. Those windows are now complete and the Football Ferns have qualified for the World Cup. Right on. Mission accomplished, job done, objective complete. The fact that they were far from impressive in the 5-0 win against Fiji in the semi-final and then especially in the 1-0 win against Papua New Guinea in the final is not irrelevant... but it’s also not the most important angle. They’ve booked their tickets to Brazil 2027, becoming the eighth team to do so, and that’s what matters most.
It will be New Zealand’s sixth consecutive World Cup appearance (and seventh overall). The World Cup is expected to expand to 48 teams like the men’s one has done but not until 2031. It’ll remain at 32 nations next year which is a little bit pesky for us as it means the groups won’t be quite as diluted as they might have been. The FIFA Rankings are going to drop us right around the fringes of a 32-team tournament... meaning a very likely return to being the lowest seeded team in our group (granted we lost against Philippines when they gave us a lower seed last time). And since we’re not co-hosting it also means we won’t be a first seed so we’re swapping the weakest opponent for the strongest opponent.
A tougher group with a younger and much more inexperienced Football Ferns team does not bode well towards earning a second World Cup victory or chasing that dream within a dream of making the knockouts. Nor have these two latest games have filled anyone with confidence as the Ferns delivered some genuinely awful finishing as they struggled to convert chances into goals against teams they were capable of putting plenty past on a happier day.
Against Fiji it didn’t really matter because the Ferns were pretty good in the first half, going four up after 38 minutes thanks mostly to some primo set pieces or secondary deliveries from Mickey Foster and Katie Kitching. But you could argue the rot set in when they only scored once more in the remaining fifty minutes, unable to get the boost of the bench that they’d gotten in all the group games. Then against PNG, bloody hell, it was like they were inventing new ways not to score. They did everything but: disallowed goals, a penalty (harshly) overturned, wide open misses, a barrage upon the crossbar, great saves, easy saves, shots gone astray, shots not taken... you name it, the Football Ferns failed to score from it. Except for one beautiful and crucial moment when Gabi Rennie made a burst past her defender and chipped across for Katie Kitching to power home a free header.
The Football Ferns not being able to score enough goals is hardly a newsflash... but the epidemic doesn’t usually extend to Oceania teams. The PNG win was only the second time in history that the Ferns have been held to a single goal against a current member of the Oceania confederation (so, discounting the Aussies or when Taiwan was in OFC during the 80s, etc). Across 47 games against those current members, New Zealand has won 46 and drawn once. That was against PNG back in 1996, also in Auckland, so there was some kinda precedent at least. Goal difference from those 47 games is: 392 for, 6 against.
So what the heck happened? Well as we’ve already established creativity was not an issue. They had enough chances to hit double figures, they just kept missing them. Some of that wastefulness was back luck and more of it was good defending from a very sturdy Papua New Guinea unit – especially goalkeeper Betty Sam. Some of it was the pressure of playing at home with big expectations. There definitely came a point where it grew to be a mental block, that creeping doubt becoming a self-sabotaging infliction. Sounds like Michael Mayne did pretty well to address that at half-time by calming things down and keeping everyone’s eyes on the prize... but he also bears some blame with this for his selections.
The home pressure thing is legit because surely you noticed the reminiscence between the Ferns vs PNG and the All Whites vs New Caledonia. In their own World Cup Qualifying final with a full strength team in home conditions, the All Whites took 60 minutes before they finally made the breakthrough (shout out to the legend Michael Boxall). In that light, this Fernies effort was the superior one because they scored after a mere 55 minutes. The difference was that the lads scored a couple times more to win 3-0, whereas the ladies got stuck with just the one goal. Again, not for any lack of chances though. Can’t imagine what the xG numbers would have had to offer.
That’s two consecutive examples, from different teams, where an OFC final has proved much tougher than expected. There are instances from the youth stuff too... last year in the Men’s U16s, the NZ team only won 2-0 against New Caledonia in the final with the last goal coming very late in the piece (Jack Clegg 44’, Ben Perez Baldoni 90+5’). The year before it was 1-1 against Fiji after 60 minutes of the final before NZ pushed out to a 3-1 win. The year before that NZ only won 1-0 against NCL in the final. The Women’s U16s did it easy last year but in 2023 they scored 50 goals in four games to get to the final... where they only won 1-0 vs Fiji thanks to a stoppage time winner from Laura Bennett. The respective U19s have been more dominant but that’s already enough evidence to show that, once you get to the final, funny things can happen. It’s hard not to get distracted by what’s at stake. Just gotta win the thing, doesn’t matter how.
Let’s also not pretend that the Football Ferns have a sterling home record because they do not. They don’t play nearly enough home games, as we know, but when they do they don’t often showcase why they need more. There was the 1-0 win against Norway in the World Cup, it was glorious and we all remember it with pride... aaaand then they lost to the Philippines straight afterwards. The last time they were in Aotearoa we saw a sweet 4-0 win against Thailand... followed by a toothless 0-0 draw in the rematch three days later which sparked the end of the Jitka Klimkova reign (it was her last game in the dugout before the gardening leave began). They won these two games against Fiji and PNG but neither were glowing performances. The trend is real, granted they are now on a five-game unbeaten streak in Aotearoa.
Football Ferns Home Games Since 2020
L 0-1 vs South Korea in Christchurch (Nov 22)
D 0-0 vs South Korea in Christchurch (Nov 22)
L 0-4 vs USA in Wellington (Jan 23)
L 0-5 vs USA in Auckland (Jan 23)
L 0-5 vs Portugal in Hamilton (Feb 23)
L 0-2 vs Argentina in Hamilton (Feb 23)
L 0-1 vs Argentina in Hamilton (Feb 23)
W 2-0 vs Vietnam in Napier (Jul 23)
L 0-1 vs Italy in Auckland (Jul 23)
W 1-0 vs Norway in Auckland (Jul 23)
L 0-1 vs Philippines in Wellington (Jul 23)
D 0-0 vs Switzerland in Dunedin (Jul 23)
W 4-0 vs Thailand in Christchurch (Apr 24)
D 0-0 vs Thailand in Christchurch (Apr 24)
W 5-0 vs Fiji in Hamilton (Apr 26)
W 1-0 vs Papua New Guinea in Auckland (Apr 26)
Looking at that, it’s difficult to tell where to draw the line between ongoing problems and those that belong to a previous era. There aren’t a lot of players in the current squad who played in more than a couple of those matches – some didn’t play in any of them until the two most recent.
That’s where the selections come under some scrutiny because Deven Jackson has been spurning chances throughout this qualifying campaign and has only scored one A-League goal in 962 minutes for Melbourne City this season. She’s clearly not in clinical finishing form right now. Nor is she an out and out striker – something that’s also not true of Katie Kitching, though she has at least been putting them away for Sunderland. Kitching is best as an attacking midfielder where she loves to get on the ball and spark things, Jackson is also a pass-first type of player who wants to get her touches. Yet they were the two strikers in the final.
Meanwhile Jacqui Hand was stuck out at wing-back despite being one of the better finishers in the squad (she and Kitching are the only active players with four goals against non-OFC teams in their careers). Hand is usually a winger at club level but there are no wings in this team so she either has to shift more attacking as a striker or more defensive as a wing-back... seems like the answer to that should be obvious for a player of Hand’s skills and yet her last four starts have all been at RWB. Hand was still the most dangerous creative outlet for the Ferns in the first half, even if she did skew a couple crosses and also contributed to the missed chances. Feels like she would have been even more effective deployed closer to the goal though.
DJ and Kitch are both facilitators at heart and we needed a hungry striker to apply the final touch. There are two of them in the squad... but Kelli Brown only got 25 mins off the bench while Milly Clegg, curiously, wasn’t used at all in either game. Clegg’s short on match fitness at the moment but she was very effective in limited minutes during the group stage last month. During these five games, the Ferns scored 14 goals in the 153 minutes that Clegg was on the pitch (8.24 per90) and scored 11 goals in the 297 mins that she was on the bench (3.33 per90). Brown was the top scorer in the tournament. Seems strange that neither started in the final after they’d alternated throughout the previous four matches. Seems very un-strange that the team was so wonky with their finishing when they didn’t utilise their best finishers (with respect to Kitching who did eventually win us the game with a very fine header).
It was also odd, though more understandable, that Rebekah Stott played both games in midfield. She’s gotten plenty of midfield activity throughout her career but not recently, not since she returned to Melbourne City. Stotty played as the middle CB last window while Kate Taylor was absent but Mayne loves that Bunge/Taylor/Foster back three (fair enough) so Stott’s been manoeuvred into the middle. Bit rough on Grace Wisnewski who, like Clegg, flew all the way back from Scandinavia and didn’t feature at all. The other two squad players who didn’t add to their caps this month were Emma Pijnenburg and Meikayla Moore and that’s because they were both injured. Dunno, we’re more than a year into this Michael Mayne Era and some things are taking shape nicely but other things still seem a bit confusing or unsettled.
The best selection that Coach Mayne made for the final was getting Charlotte Lancaster out there on the left... only for her to get injured early on. She battled through until half-time after receiving some extensive strapping around her knee but it was clear she was hobbled. Lancaster was walking around on crutches during the post-game stuff. That sucks because her crossing was such a handy tool for the Ferns last month and she could have helped break down that stubborn PNG backline with her battering ram approach. At least her club season with Newcastle Jets is over so she’s got time to recover.
That’s where the reach the bottom line of these goal-scoring wobbles because Charlotte Lancaster was far from the only victim of the injury bug. Already mentioned Emma Pijnenburg’s rolled ankle, she’s a very incisive passer who could have made a difference. Pia Vlok also rolled an ankle in the Fijian game and therefore missed the final. Brown didn’t get to do much. Clegg didn’t play at all. Gabi Rennie only played half a game (and was brilliant) while Jacqui Hand was stuck out wide most of the time. Keep in mind that Macey Fraser hasn’t played for the national team in over a year.
Above all else we saw the difference that having no Indiah-Paige Riley in the team makes. IPR has been the Ferns’ most potent attacking force over the past twelve months and there’s no case for anyone to rival her for that tag. Not been a very fruitful club season, stuck on the bench for Crystal Palace, but she’s always been sharp for the Ferns. She’s fast and she takes on defenders. She scores and assists. It’s no wonder that the team looked a bit sluggish without her. Riley was the one who made the difference against American Samoa in the third group game when the Ferns were in a similar situation.
Throw a mana wave in the direction of Gabi Rennie though. Subbed on at half-time in the final to play RWB (with Hand swapping to the left until she was replaced by Manaia Elliott), she showed exactly why she’s been pinpointed as a potential breakthrough player in the Swedish top division this year... and why she’s surely in contention to start in that position for the Ferns. This is the opposite situation to Hand where Rennie, a right-mid/wing for her club team, has often been used as a striker for the national team but her skills better suit that wing-back role where she adds power, energy, and an immense workrate. Defensively she’s come on in leaps and bounds since moving to Sweden.
In terms of precision in the penalty area, not so much, hence she’s not going to be that effective when used up top (she scooped a huge chance over the crossbar against PNG from about eight yards out). But her crossing was superb... including the assist for the winning goal. She was blitzing it to the byline and everything. There will be many times where a more pragmatic, defensive-minded approach will be required in these positions (CJ Bott, Ally Green, Grace Neville, etc) but the prospect of Gabi Rennie doing that stuff at RWB and Indi Riley doing what she does at LWB might be just the tonic to translate goals against Oceania teams into goals against everyone else. Plus it frees up Jacqui Hand to play up front.
So many of these ideas come back to this being a young – and more importantly an inexperienced – squad. Not only on the international stage but also at club level where we’ve got fewer players in the world’s very best leagues than we’ve had for at least a decade. The depth is nice, the overall number of professionals is surely a record. But there’s nobody in the American NWSL or the English WSL right now. You only had to look at how Kate Taylor performed in these two games, as the captain, to see how much that stuff matters. Taylor was arguably the one player across the entire squad who brought the full balance of intensity and quality to the field across both fixtures, having been battle-hardened from playing Lyon and PSG multiple times per year in France. A fitting captain and a deserving pillar of the Gucci Mayne Football Ferns.
Further to the inexperience thing, it wasn’t very long ago that we could pick half a starting line-up full of centurions. Now we can barely get two with even 50 caps in any given eleven...
International Caps For Active Players Used Since 2025
100+ Caps: Katie Bowen (116), Rebekah Stott (112)
50-99 Caps: Meikayla Moore (76), CJ Bott (52)
30-49 Caps: Liv Chance (48), Gabi Rennie (47), Claudia Bunge (42), Grace Jale (40), Jacqui Hand (39), Indi Riley (37), Mickey Foster (35), Vic Esson (33), Kate Taylor (32)
10-29 Caps: Liz Anton (29), Katie Kitching (28), Mackenzie Barry (24), Anna Leat (23), Milly Clegg (23), Ally Green (20), Kelli Brown (13), Grace Neville (13), Maya Hahn (12), Hannah Blake (12), Emma Pijnenburg (10)
<10 Caps: Manaia Elliott (9), Deven Jackson (9), Macey Fraser (8), Grace Wisnewski (7), Charlotte Lancaster (4), Pia Vlok (4), Alina Santos (3), Suya Haering (2), Lara Wall (2), Maddie Iro (1)
Only one way to get experience and that’s to play games. There will be a bunch more of those between now and the World Cup (as well as two club transfer windows) and the journey continues. Yes, this window was a bit dodgy. But performances against the Oceania teams have never had much correlation with what the Ferns do against everyone else. There were lessons to be learned... there were also a lot of very influential attacking players unavailable. So it goes. These were World Cup qualifiers and we are now World Cup qualified. That’s enough for now.
More Reactions
One thing that’ll bring some measure of relief is the fact that Katie Kitching’s goal was the only one that this Papua New Guinea side conceded throughout qualifying. They won 5-0 vs Vanuatu, 4-0 vs New Caledonia, and 1-0 vs Fiji during the group stage. They beat American Samoa 1-0 in the semis. To only lose 1-0 to New Zealand on top of that shows a superbly well organised defence whose efforts in the final were far from a fluke. They’ve been this team throughout. So yeah the Ferns should have scored bundles more than they did but at least there’s a track record of great defence from their opponents. Good to know that PNG still have an intercontinental tournament playoff to fall back upon after this because they deserve that much.
Something that the Ferns seemed to struggle against in particular were aggressive defenders that didn’t only sit back but actively put a bit of pressure on the ball, particularly in the defensive third (neither Fiji nor PNG had any notable attacks to speak of, so defensively they were completely sound). Fiji’s set piece marking was rancid but especially in that second half they did well to crowd things out in the midfield, not just sitting back and trying to block shots but stepping up and trying to prevent them. PNG did the same thing. It wasn’t enough to stop the Ferns from creating but it did seem to frustrate them. That’s where they needed to shift the ball out wide and get around them better... the lack of pace in this squad is a concern and it may prevent them from playing as expansively as they’d prefer to.
The semi-final was moved forward by 24 hours due to the impending cyclone. That altered kickoff might have affected availability of some of the later travellers, since Hahn, Wisnewski, Clegg, Blake, and Foster all played games on Monday NZT. Only the defender among them started against Fiji.
This is just the second time in history that the All Whites and Football Ferns have qualified consecutively for their respective World Cups. The other time was the 2010 Men’s WC and the 2021 Women’s WC.
The Ferns were on a five-game losing streak prior to these Oceania games, having lost 1-0 and 2-0 to Mexico, 6-0 to USA, 5-0 and 2-0 to Australia. 0 goals scored and 16 goals conceded. Now they’re on a five-game winning streak with 25 goals scored and 0 goals conceded.
Football Ferns in 2027 World Cup Qualifiers
| Games | Minutes | Goals | Assists | G+A/90 | Team GD/90 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Michaela Foster | 5 | 349 | 1 | 3 | 1.03 | 4.38 |
| Claudia Bunge | 4 | 345 | 1 | 1 | 0.52 | 4.43 |
| Grace Jale | 4 | 337 | 1 | 2 | 0.80 | 5.07 |
| Katie Kitching | 5 | 324 | 3 | 3 | 1.67 | 3.89 |
| Rebekah Stott | 4 | 295 | 1 | 0.31 | 4.88 | |
| Maya Hahn | 4 | 240 | 0.00 | 4.88 | ||
| Deven Jackson | 3 | 236 | 1 | 2 | 1.14 | 5.34 |
| Hannah Blake | 4 | 235 | 4 | 1 | 1.91 | 4.60 |
| Manaia Elliott | 4 | 227 | 2 | 0.79 | 4.76 | |
| Kelli Brown | 4 | 210 | 5 | 2.14 | 3.86 | |
| Charlotte Lancaster | 4 | 198 | 3 | 1.36 | 5.91 | |
| Vic Esson | 2 | 180 | 0.00 | 4.50 | ||
| Alina Santos | 2 | 180 | 0.00 | 6.50 | ||
| Kate Taylor | 2 | 180 | 1 | 0.50 | 3.00 | |
| Milly Clegg | 3 | 153 | 2 | 1.18 | 8.24 | |
| Indiah-Paige Riley | 3 | 146 | 2 | 1 | 1.85 | 4.93 |
| Emma Pijnenburg | 3 | 137 | 1 | 0.66 | 6.57 | |
| Liz Anton | 3 | 130 | 1 | 0.69 | 6.92 | |
| Jacqui Hand | 2 | 125 | 0.00 | 3.60 | ||
| Meikayla Moore | 2 | 123 | 0.00 | 6.59 | ||
| Grace Wisnewski | 2 | 123 | 0.00 | 4.39 | ||
| Pia Vlok | 4 | 106 | 1 | 0.85 | 7.64 | |
| Maddie Iro | 1 | 90 | 0.00 | 3.00 | ||
| Suya Haering | 2 | 79 | 0.00 | 6.84 | ||
| Mackenzie Barry | 2 | 77 | 0.00 | 5.84 | ||
| Gabi Rennie | 2 | 66 | 1 | 1.36 | 2.73 | |
| Ally Green | 1 | 59 | 0.00 | 6.10 |
That Team GD/90 is like the plus/minus stat in basketball, it’s saying what the average goal difference was for the Ferns (who didn’t concede a goal throughout WCQs) was when that particular player was on the pitch. Milly Clegg rated highest at 8.24... in part because she didn’t play the low-scoring semi or final.
Katie Kitching was preparing to take the penalty against PNG when it was overturned. Kelli Brown scored one against American Samoa but KK wasn’t on the pitch at the time. Kitch did miss one against Venezuela last year but she’s also scored pens against Zambia and Thailand in her career. Grace Jale missed one against Samoa in 2024, one game after Ally Green scored one against Tonga. That was in Olympic qualifying. And of course Ria Percival missed one in the World Cup against Norway.
Michael Mayne spoke about the injuries in his press conference prior to the final...
“Meikayla Moore was ruled out just ahead of the last game, that situation hasn’t changed, but she’s stayed in squad and is gonna rehab here. Unfortunately with Emma [Pijnenburg] and Pia [Vlok]’s two injuries were just circumstantial in terms of how they happened, both rolled ankles. But both left looking a lot better than we initially saw. I spoke with Bev [Priestman]. We scanned them both to make sure that was done properly and then sent them back to Wellington to begin their rehab.”
Since then Charlotte Lancaster has also done something to her knee. Indi Riley was initially named but got injured in club training before she could travel. That’s a hefty attrition rate from one tour, jeez.
On the positive side, Malia Steinmetz recently made her return from about 14 months out with an ACL injury. She wasn’t fit enough to make the squad, having only played two club games as a substitute so far, but with her Nordsjælland teammate Grace Wisnewski already travelling they did a very cool thing in bringing Steinmetz along too. She trained with the team, albeit with a personalised schedule, and was able to join in all the tactical and community aspects – helping integrate her back into the team. Also hanging around the squad in a non-playing capacity were goalkeepers Maddi Iro and Brooke Neary. They only named two goalies in the squad, with Alina Santos playing one game and Vic Esson playing the other, so presumably Iro (playing state league in Australia these days, having debuted for the Ferns in the American Samoa game) and Neary (third choice keeper at the Wellington Phoenix, hasn’t been in an official Ferns squad before) were drafted in for some extra bodies in training. You might be thinking that’s rather harsh on Aimee Danieli who is the second choice keeper at the Nix... but Neary would have been there because she’s the frontrunner to be the number one at the U20 World Cup later this year. Pretty sure the All Whites did something similar with Henry Gray last year.
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