They’re so much fun, these All Whites squads. What a luxury to have actual selection controversies, to know that there are more quality kiwis out there than can fit in a single touring party.
Then Fernando Llorente and Winston Reid bumped shoulders. Winston ran over and tried to put on NFL block on him as he shielded the ball. Carroll and Llorente clashed on the end of a long ball. That was one too many for Winnie, Big Andy’s his best mate, and he ran in to fire away some heavy words. Love a bit of biffo in the footy!
On the morning of the Footy Ferns’ second international against the USA, coach Tony Readings was quoted on the radio talking about ‘putting learnings into action’ between the first game and the second. So let’s talk learnings then.
Since Winston Reid returned from injury it’s almost been like a different West Ham. Two games and two clean sheets – the only thing missing away to West Brom on the weekend was a winning goal.
Mike Den Heijer is a kiwi footy player doing his thing for NEC Nijmegen in The Netherlands. How that came to happen is a pretty fantastic story and Mike was decent enough to spin the yarn here for us.
Football managers are held to notoriously fragile standards but even for the Premier League seeing Crystal Palace sack Frank de Boer four games into the league season was a brow-raiser.
There’s really nothing The Woodsman can do wrong right now, is there? He scored in his first Premier League game for Burnley and then grabbed a hatty for the All Whites on international duty. And guess what? Now he's scored again.
It was all action as New Zealand club football’s two most iconic competitions came to their dramatic conclusion. Glenfield Rovers vs Eastern Suburbs in the women’s and Central United vs Onehunga Sports in the men’s.
Aotearoa’s done its bit. A Chris Wood hatty in Auckland inspired a comfortable 8-3 aggregate victory over the Solomon Islands and the All Whites will represent Oceania in the last round of World Cup qualifying.
The most important thing to remember about this game is that, thanks to Friday night, it didn’t matter at all. An 8-3 aggregate win may as well have been 8-7 and we still woulda been looking forward to that intercontinental playoff.
Most of the Flying Kiwis were back in Aotearoa for All Whites duty so this week might be a bit of a slim one, but just because Chris Wood wasn’t in action for Burnley doesn’t mean he wasn’t making waves.
The defending champions and the team left out in the Europa League wilderness. You can understand Arsenal having some struggles given the state of things there but Chelsea just won the title...
In the end it was like nothing we’d ever seen from Uncle Tony’s All Whites. Not only did they aggressively look to dominate their Island opponents but they scored a bunch of goals in the process.
The work has begun. Only a few days after being announced as a signing, Woody was making his debut for Burnley. A few days later he was on the board.
This latest Footy Ferns squad was a hugely anticipated one. Probably the most exciting press release the team’s had in a long while (sure beats learning that the captain’s prematurely retired for non-football reasons…).
Three different scorers combining for 16 goals, netted at four different clubs. Thanks to Woody’s recent move to Burnley those numbers are about to blow out big time so let’s celebrate the humble beginnings while we still can...
He might not have been the main focus lately among kiwi footy folks but Winston Reid had himself one rollercoaster of a week, that’s for sure.
Yup, The Woodsman is returning to the big time. It’s a crazy set of circumstances but Leeds United are gonna have to find themselves a new target man because Burnley have put up the cash.
The plan is simple: Two games against the Solomon Islands, one home and one away. Win them on aggregate and advance to the intercontinental playoff with South America.
As far as season openers go, Old Trafford isn’t the best place to get things underway. Winston was fit, Winston was back in action but his Hammers came up against a rampant Jose Mourinho team