Earlier this week, Abby Erceg announced her retirement from the Football Ferns. The following day NZ Football CEO Andy Martin went on the radio to exercise his right of rebuttal. Martin threw out a few contradictory ideas and situations, some fair and some a bit stupid, but in effect all he said was that nothing was gonna change.

Which is a shame because the governance can say what they want but the players are the ones who go out there and, you know, play. And let’s not forget that while the team is reliant on the governance to sort this stuff out for them, New Zealand Football are pretty reliant on their teams as well. Why do you think they’re investing so much into the All Whites (hell, they even booked them some friendlies!) making the next World Cup? Might it have something to do with that big ol’ FIFA pay-out for competing nations?

The Football Ferns always make World Cups and Olympics but that’s only gonna get harder if more top players retire prematurely and the suits in charge refuse to acknowledge that the players know what they’re talking about. It was too expensive yesterday so it’ll be too expensive tomorrow is the message. We’ve already written about this one (with personal endorsement!) but here’s a bunch more words in retaliation to the retaliation.

It’s an Amateur Sport in NZ!

This is a fair point. It is an amateur sport and that’s the same across the entire board with the exception of the Wellington Phoenix. Martin has said that NZF are in early discussions to try and get a female Phoenix team in the W-League and that’d clearly be a great thing. Not just because of the standard of play being higher than club footy in New Zealand but it’s also roughly 20-odd professional contracts being offered out and without having to leave the country.

But there isn’t money at club level so these players naturally have to make certain sacrifices. Part of that is done with the hope that if they go far enough and perform for their country then they might just catch the eye of a few professional scouts from overseas. In the last few years the number of pros has risen significantly within this team. The Football Ferns went to the 2007 World Cup with 14 of their 21 players based at NZ club sides. Four were at lower division American teams, one at an American University (Ali Riley at Stanford) with only Rachel Howard (TSV Crailsheim in Germany) and Rebecca Smith (Sunnana SK in Sweden) were at top level clubs, though presumably the lower-div USA teams were still offering contracts.

Meanwhile at the 2016 Olympics, the kiwi squad featured only 6 of 18 players at NZ clubs (based on the official team lists) and of them Rebekah Stott already had several years of pro experience in Australia and Germany (now at the Seattle Reign and a recent W-League champ with Melbourne City), Erin Nayler has since moved to France to play for Olympique Lyonnais and Annalie Longo has played in Aussie as well.

So Martin is right when he says that the national team is also a “shop window” for pro contracts. It’s a shame that internationals should have to defer to clubs like that but it’s not that far removed from Slaven Bilic telling Winston Reid that his dodgy hammy means he’ll have to miss those two All Whites games coming up, even though he’ll probably start the first West Ham game after the break. It’s not only women’s footy where club vs country is an issue, it’s the entire FIFA structure. There weren’t many Bayern Munich players in the U20 World Cup team that came to New Zealand in 2015 either. (Not many meaning zero, and only one from Dortmund).

The fact remains that these players cannot get paid in NZ, there isn’t the money going around (and this isn’t the best time to open the can of worms that is player payment at amateur club levels, although you have to drop several divisions in the men’s stuff in Auckland before you find many teams that are completely without financial offerings – did you hear the one about the Auckland club side whose women’s premier team had to whip up a givealittle page to fund their way to Christchurch for a knockout cup game (they went on to win the competition) while the star player in the men’s side earns $1000 a week?).

Therefore NZF’s idea is to “bridge the gap” between amateurs and professionals with these training programmes that offer a pretty rare opportunity to amateur players to test themselves amongst professionals. In other countries the clubs are strong enough to take care of that pathway on their own but in Aotearoa it was decided that we needed another rung on the ladder.

We’re Ranked Top 20 in the World!

What’s a little odd is that Martin gave the coaches full credit for getting the Ferns as competitive as they are. Sure, Tony Readings and the team have definitely gone well beyond their job descriptions in what they do with this bridge programme but… the main reason for the Ferns’ rise is the absence of Australia in Oceania. That’s not a criticism of the players, the team has never been stronger, nor an excusing of what the coaches have achieved either. It’s simply the truth. Without Australia beating us for Oceanian qualifying spots at major tournaments we’ve been able to get to all of these World Cups and Olympics which has widened that shop window enormously.

It’s also probably widened the talent gap between the best and the rest within the squad and you can see from their performances that where other nations can make those impact subs, we don’t have the luxury. That’s what happens when you mix amateur with pros and you can guarantee that the players are developing more once they hit the professional ranks than they do in these bridge programmes – although whether they could get to Point A without Point B is another matter.

Of course, there’s a big difference between ‘top 20’ and ‘top three’ and one of the surprisingly underreported points that Martin made was that the High Performance Sport target for the last Olympics was for the Ferns to medal. They were drawn in a group with America, France and Colombia and were expected to medal to keep their funding!?

Admittedly High Performance Sport has a lot of ground to cover with a limited amount of cash but, jeezus, that’s not even close to a realistic aim. Just making it out of that group would be an almost unprecedented achievement, we made the quarter finals in London and that’s the best we’ve ever done. The Football Ferns have never qualified for the knockouts at a World Cup. Nah but they had to get a medal to keep their funding.

Which also makes you wonder why NZF couldn’t prepare in advance for this. They were almost certainly not gonna medal so the writing was on the wall… but then again so were the scapegoats…

Andy Martin: “If we’d have medalled at the Olympics or World Cup, none of these issues would have come up because of course we’d have continued with our funding. So it’s a catch-22, we’ve got to be performing to get the reward out of High Performance Sport.”

First off bro, congrats on a rare literal use of the catch-22 cliché, even if it wasn’t quite meant like that. The definition from Joseph Heller’s classic work of satirical fiction is a problem for which the only solution is inherently impossible because of the problem itself. In the novel the characters are WWII bomber pilots, well aware that their job is the next thing in line to suicide. You can get out of having to fly if you’re insane but only an insane man would fly in the first place so claiming to be insane to get out of duty is the sanest thing one could do in that situation, therefore proving that one is not insane… you get it?

In this situation, the only way the Ferns can keep their funding is if they perform well above what the level that they’re realistically capable of considering the funding that they already get. If they don’t, then they get even less funding. Bloody hell.

Second of all, Erceg didn’t retire because of what was about to happen but because of what has already happened and has been happening her whole career. Don’t blame HP Sport for all of this when the problems existed long before the funding was slashed.

The Training Camps Are Voluntary!

From what Abby Erceg had to say, the players aren’t blaming the camps themselves. They agree that they’re a valuable tool in expanding the squad, the problem is that they’re so difficult to commit too. Not to say that players don’t make that commitment, more that it’s a sacrifice well beyond what should be expected of the nation’s best players. Most of this was discussed in the last piece but there’s one particularly annoying Martinism here.

The CEO of NZF says that the camps are voluntary. Sure, technically they are. But what happens if you don’t attend? Will you make the next international squad? Will you improve enough as a footballer on your own? Will you get noticed by a foreign scout? Will a top English or Swedish or American club be leaving messages in your voicemail?

No. They’re only voluntary in as far as New Zealand Football says they are. That’s the extent of their voluntariness. If there wasn’t a necessary benefit to these things then they wouldn’t exist at all and the players wouldn’t have to damn near starve themselves for them.

But so long as they’ve voluntary it sounds like they don’t have to count as official international duty, therefore players don’t have to be paid as they would for an international tour, with match fees and retainers and lodging and all of that. Sounds rather convenient, really.

Andy Martin: “I don’t apologise for the fact they’re not on a retainer. We’re helping them, we’re trying to do something for them in a voluntary programme.”

Sorry guys, NZ Football and their web of bureaucratic excuses are the real good guys here, we all forgot. It’s about this moment where a little human decency ought to come into the equation. These women are representing your organisation and you cannot be so out of touch with your own workers – especially when Martin consistently dodged the question of NZF’s surplus. It’s not enough to say that your sweatshop is providing jobs to people that need them, not if the conditions are like this. As much as the players are giving up for this dream of theirs, that’s the same thing that Erceg is giving up to get out of this and that’s not a factor you can deny with corporate mistruths.

The money exists if you’re willing to look for it. Perhaps it’s not in the NZF bank balance but there are other ways to make that work. Employ the players in your grassroots programmes for God’s sake. Most of them are out their coaching for a few bucks in their own time anyway, use these great role models to help expand the game, which leads to more and better players, which increases the standard of the game. Use the controversy of this situation to find a sponsor out there willing to use the goodwill of doing their bit for gender equality to their advantage. Hell, NZ Rugby might wanna take note.

There are ways to make this work and it’s not good enough to say that this is the status quo and we can’t help that. Come on, this is the biggest sport in the world. The world is already going in progressive directions with these matters, despite a couple recent political setbacks, so get on ahead and be a leader for change already. You could start by getting the Football Ferns the public recognition that they deserve, where’s the marketing team at?

Other Players Will Soon Follow!

See, it’s not only about the living costs, there’s an emotional toll to this as well. While they’re out there saying this isn’t good enough, and their bosses are saying yes it is, the Ferns aren’t exactly feeling, well, as Erceg put it: “appreciated, respected and endorsed”. Is that putting them in the best situation to succeed?

It doesn’t take much to see that others are absolutely going to follow soon. Erceg has set a precedent and unfortunately it doesn’t look like NZF are too keen to change. It’s been slightly disappointing that the reaction hasn’t been tougher around the country, there have been several examples of women’s sport inequalities getting into the news cycle, think the Chiefs or Aaron Smith or a couple notable others, but this one never quite took hold like it should have. If it had then we’d be seeing the toll of public pressure on NZF right now and unfortunately it seems like Andy Martin was allowed to shrug this off and too many of the rest of the media agreed to do the same (not all of them though, some are fighting the good fight and they know who they are).

Meaning that more is gonna have to be done. More players are gonna feel undervalued and decide, like Erceg, that it ain’t worth it. More stands are going to need to be taken. You only have to look as far as the player support offered to Erceg to see where they all stand:

(Cheeky shout out from Betsy to In The Back of the Net, there)

Sarah Gregorius is one of those there that tweeted publically in Abby Erceg’s support, she actually retired from internationals late last year. She’s only 29 years old herself. Gregorius didn’t make any grand statements about why she stepped away from the Ferns but she’s clearly made her own position known this week. And for every overt message, there were plenty more teammates covertly offering their backing with likes and retweets and all that (don’t say that doesn’t matter, people are well aware those things are public).

The Suits Know Best!

What this pretty much comes down to is the condescending idea that the people who sit in the boardroom know more about the game and what it takes than those who actually play. They don’t, their job is to facilitate - not to dismiss - and the initial NZF response was something that got a bit of ink in the initial TNC piece. Safe to say that dismissive nature has not disappeared…

Andy Martin: “Abby’s earned the right to give an opinion and football’s full of opinions as we know.”

You don’t “earn the right” to have an opinion, dickhead. You’re born with that right and some opinions are more informed and valuable than others but everyone’s allowed to have one. Yes and football is full of them. All he’s saying with that is that she can say what she wants but it doesn’t really matter. That, frankly, is complete arse.

We’re talking about the opinion of somebody on the fringes versus somebody who is right there in amongst the controversy and telling you that this is how it is. You can’t deny Erceg’s own experiences and her teammates have rallied around her so who exactly is the informed and valued one here? Nobody’s asking anyone to break the bank here and the journey to representing your country will always be hard but it’s gotta be hard for the right reasons. It’s up to those in charge to remove as many barriers as possible. After all, doesn’t that improve the team? Doesn’t that mean more players are competing? Doesn’t that mean more international standard players and more professional players and more success internationally and more money coming back the other way in the future? Make a goddamn investment.

In the meantime, here’s hoping the Ferns rip it up at the Cyprus Cup because we all know how important their ‘performance’ is. It’s a tournament they’ve done well in in the past, finishing second in 2010. It’s also a fairly major women’s international tournament held in a country with a population of 1.14 million people and offering free entry to fans at games. And it doesn’t look like we’ll even get it on TV.