The captain of the New Zealand football team has retired from internationals. Not Winston Reid, but Abby Erceg of the women’s team – who has played at multiple World Cups and is every bit as important to the country’s international set-up. The most capped kiwi footballer ever and she’s retiring at age 27. Nothing to do with health or desire either but, well… let’s let Abby explain things:

Abby Erceg: “Due to the unfortunate and unfavourable circumstances within the organisation that is nzf, it is with regret and great sadness that today is the day that I announce my retirement from the international game. Without being able to justify my involvement any longer I will be stepping back in the hopes to create change for the current and future generations of nz footballers. I will continue to enjoy a professional career at a club level which I still find great joy in and I look forward to taking on that endeavour in the coming years. I have encountered many personal successes within the international environment and it is sad that this is what's required to adopt change. I say thank you to anyone involved in my international career no matter how big or small your role was, you have helped achieve the successes that I have been so fortunate to find. Time to move on to places where female footballers are appreciated, respected and endorsed. I hope that nzf one day has this philosophy.”

To put this in some perspective, the Football Ferns train 4-6 times per week when in season, as Erceg explained on Radio NZ’s Nine To Noon show (cheers to RNZ for continually flying the flag for quality NZ broadcasting). We’re talking about team sessions with the wider training squad and they’re not getting paid a cent to be there. Facilities and gym work are taken care of either by New Zealand Football or High Performance Sport but that’s roughly it. Players have to work jobs on the side to maintain the lifestyle.

And this is necessary stuff, Erceg says so herself. You simply don’t compete with the best in the world if you aren’t training at a high level, working on combinations and generally improving as players. Putting in the hours, as they say. Except those hours make it bloody hard to maintain a career on the side and when a large chunk of the team is based outside of Auckland that makes it even harder – either relocating to the big city with all the costs that entails or commuting with all the costs that entails. And just try and find a decent paying job when you’re having to train that often and could be heading away on tour for weeks at a time as well.

Obviously there are sacrifices you need to make to get to the top but they’ve gotta be realistic or else you get situations like this where the team’s captain and best defender is walking away with plenty more left to offer the national team. Oh and their relatively average performance at the last Olympics means that HP Sport are cutting their funding over the next Olympic cycle so… yeah. It’s not getting much easier.

Abby Erceg is lucky because her talent has been noticed and nurtured professionally. Following spells in Spain, Australia and Germany, she found a home in America with the Chicago Red Stars in the NWSL (America’s premier women’s football comp) where she played for two seasons before being traded to the Western New York Flash – the club which she captained to the 2016 Championship.

(Since then the team has been sold and relocated to North Carolina and renamed the ‘Courage’ – which is appropriate right about now – and Erceg remains a crucial player for them).

That Flash team drew an average attendance of over 3800 people last season. As a professional player Erceg told RNZ that she gets her housing, her gear, her training facilities and all of that stuff paid for, either by the club or by sponsors. Her salary pretty much goes towards food, entertainment and savings. That’s meant that she and others in her position (there are roughly a dozen other kiwi women playing in top quality leagues overseas) have been able to maintain their commitment to Football Ferns up until now but just because some players are pros doesn’t make this excusable.

Consider a squad where half are amateurs. Everyone’s training together and the amateurs are probably struggling to cut it with the professionals, who are struggling to adapt to playing with the amateurs. Everyone’s at different standards. Then you’ve got the financial side of things ensuring that those that are getting left behind continue to be left behind unless. The training grounds are probably bang average and everyone’s making huge sacrifices just to be there. It’d be insane to think that wouldn’t affect players’ performance.

Over the last decade, the Football Ferns have emerged as a genuine team on the world scale. After missing three straight World Cups and never having made an Olympic Games before, the kiwi side qualified for both in 2007 (World Cup in China) and 2008 (Beijing Olympics). They haven’t missed a major tournament since and Erceg has played in five of those. Clearly Australia leaving Oceania had a lot to do with that, effectively opening up a place in FIFA tournaments at all age levels for NZ, but with those opportunities and that exposure we’ve seen football in Aotearoa grow across the board. More money is coming in and, especially, more players are getting professional contracts overseas.

The Football Ferns aren’t being held back by their best players, they’re being held back by a lack of depth and a governing body that isn’t committed to changing that. The thing is, you either care about this stuff or you don’t. New Zealand Football clearly don’t. There’s no middle ground here, just because they get a few games on Sky TV doesn’t mean they’re doing all they can for the sport – who’s getting that broadcasting rights cash, the players or Andy Martin and chums? New Zealand Football is happy to brag about their yearly surpluses but putting that money to any use is clearly a step too far.

Again, there is no middle ground. Either you commit to putting this team in the best situation to succeed – and right now all we’re talking about is bloody living costs – or you accept that they probably won’t. Considering this is a national team that is regularly there at major tournaments, which beat Brazil last year, which is ranked inside the top 20 in the world, you’d think that here is a wonderful chance to put kiwi footy on the map. The more success they have, the more players that’ll get professional deals, the more sponsors that’ll come on-board, the more prestige that the team will hold with fans and all of that other stuff. Or you could pocket the profits and keep repeating the same old joke about how there’s no money to spare.

The men’s team has plenty more cash to spend but even they have their own financial dramas. For one thing they haven’t played a competitive friendly on NZ shores since 2014 because it’s too expensive to host teams. But… are the books in the black or are they in the black? You’re not a publically traded company here, ya muppets. Surely that money’s for the game.

But it’d be wrong to turn this into a competition between the genders. It’s not about whether the men get more than the women, it’s not about whether the women outperform the men (although both are true). You have to look at them as two different sports and assess them from there. The Football Ferns are competitive against the best teams on the planet and their governing body can’t even afford to stump up hotel costs or whatever.

And how did NZF respond to the retirement of one of its legends? With honesty and reverence? With sympathy and acceptance? Hahaha, of course not.

“Disappointed”, aye? What are you, her parents? Oh but it gets worse. The whole article could use some compassionate editing, from simple stuff like being “sad to hear the news” when celebrating her achievements would be more appropriate. Safe to say they wouldn’t be “sad to hear the news” if Glenn Moss or Andrew Durante announced their retirement tomorrow. Perhaps that sentiment would be buried in there somewhere but the leading line would have a little more to do with their playing careers.

Then again, of course they took it personally – it was meant personally. The last two sentences of the Instagram statement are completely scathing, go on and have another read before you get a load of what Andy Martin had to say in response.

NZF CEO, Andy Martin: “First and foremost we are sad to see Abby finish her international career. She has been an integral part of the Ferns for the past decade and the captain for the past four years. She has taken the team to the Olympic Games, FIFA World Cups and will be remembered as one of the legends of our game.”

That’s more like it, why didn’t you lead with that last bit?

NZFCEOAM: “The Ferns have gone from strength to strength in recent years and their funding leading into the Rio Olympic Games was the most it has ever been. The team has had significant opportunities – and will do going forward – to be at their best and compete with the best teams in the world at pinnacle events.”

The most it’s ever been… is that NZF money or HPS money? Serious question. Because the HP Sport money is being reduced from NZ$800k to around NZ$500k for each of the next three years so perhaps NZF could make up the difference? No, you’re right. Wasn’t even worth asking.

NZFCEOAM: “For teams from this part of the world, as it is well-known, competing in international football is a huge challenge and there are financial realities. Investing in the Ferns is a priority for New Zealand Football as a result of the success they have had on the world stage and also the positive impact they have had on the women’s game here in New Zealand.”

You realise they lose money if they don’t make World Cups or Olympics. This team is dependent on performance at these tournaments for their funding but they only have half a squad that’s used to playing on that level and if NZF are happy enough with the status quo (and that seems to be the impression – like, they got this far with things the way they are, why change anything?) then what happens if they miss qualification? It’s happened to the All Whites before – the men’s team missed out on the last Olympics and whose fault was that?

Look at transfer fees, look at sponsorship deals, look at the prices of the bloody replica shirts on the rack at the store. Money doesn’t sleep. If you leave funding numbers lying idle then you fall behind, simple as that. The Football Ferns are making tournaments because the path to them is wide open – imagine the mess if they didn’t have that avenue. It’s not like they’re making the knockout stages at any of them either, this could be a real crossroads for the sport in this country. Grow or fall back. Evolve or die.

NZFCEOAM: “New Zealand Football will continue to invest into the women’s football programme to give this team the best chance of winning at FIFA World Cups and Olympics. The Ferns play a significant role in inspiring the next generation of women that success on the world stage is very much achievable.”

Listen to that, he’s like the guy that gives the last few French fries in the carton to a homeless guy outside Maccas and thinks that he’s out there solving the housing crisis.

We’re talking about the best people in the country at what they do and so many of them are struggling to even make a living in order to compete with other countries. New Zealand’s geographic location doesn’t have anything to do with it, it’s not even solely a feminist argument here it’s a worker’s rights argument as well. NZF’s stance is that by “bridging the gap” between amateurs and professionals in what is an amateur sport in this country, they’re giving the best players more opportunity to in effect audition for pro contracts overseas. Yeah… or you could listen to the players themselves when they say it isn’t working.

This is not a new complaint either. All it took was the retirement of the captain for anyone to take notice. The Australian national team went on strike recently because of the same problems, it’s so frustrating that it seems the only way an organisation will even acknowledge this stuff is when you call them out in public and that takes some immense bravery when you’re one person up against a rotating cog of public relations automatons. Immense credit to Abby Erceg, she’s a goddamn kiwi hero.

As for NZ Football, maybe take a leaf out of NZ Cricket’s book after they released an investigation into the game in this country last November that found they had severely neglected the women’s side of things. It was the same issues as well, not enough money and not enough public interest. So what did they do? They humbled themselves and set about making things right. Pretty hard to imagine NZF doing the same while they’re out there patting themselves on the backs for having spared any cents at all (cents but not sense).

NZC: “We need to put up our hand here and accept responsibility. We have allowed women's cricket to be run by men for women; we have neglected the women's game on the basis of cost, and a perceived lack of interest. We have sidelined women's cricket both structurally and philosophically. We were wrong, and we now need to address the areas we've allowed to slip.”

As always, the first step is admitting you have a problem.