Seven thousand two hundred and thirty six people turned up at Westpac Stadium in Wellington to watch the Football Ferns take on Japan. The biggest crowd a home women’s international has ever attracted in Aotearoa.
How nice is it to feel positive about an All Whites tour? Two wins against non-OFC opposition and Fritz Schmid has already surpassed Anthony Hudson’s total. Don’t know when the AWs will next play but they’re on a winning streak at the moment!
Time for Groups D, E & F - where the shoulders of Lionel Messi get a test alongside the emergent talent of Sergej Milinković-Savić, Germany’s striker dilemma and Nigeria’s excellent team jersey’s and undercover knockout chances.
Now that’s what we’re talking about. The All Whites saved their best performance for the toughest game and just absolutely thumped India, did them dirty in front of their own fans. Magical stuff.
Going team by team through the battlers of the 2018 FIFA World Cup, starting with Group A, B and C. Got some French flair as well as some Aussie averageness on the table in part one…
Well now that was a weird old game. Lucky you if you stayed up until the wee small hours to get a peek at that, the All Whites winning a rare game against a non-Oceania opposition.
Billy T was back in that starting XI for the first time since the middle of April and the fifth time overall, having come off the bench last week. Up against Zlatan Ibrahimovic and the LA Galaxy, Tui was picked to start at fullback with regular RB Alvas Powell out injured.
New Zealanders tend to give a lot of silly names to their sports teams. The All Blacks are obviously the most well-known around the world but it wasn’t so long ago, only eight years, that the All Whites were gracing the FIFA World Cup in their unbeaten honour.
We’re supposed to be winning these kinds of games. We should have won this game. It doesn’t even matter if this is a weakened All Whites squad, that’s excuse is not gonna fly here.
The All Whites are taking what’s effectively a second-string squad to a tournament in which they’re the lowest ranked team… but how would you react to the suggestion that the All Whites should beat all three of these teams over in Mumbai?
Mark Rudan, aye? He’s not the romantic choice but hands were pretty tied on this one. There are no available local candidates and it was never ideal to ask Fritz Schmid or one of that lot to double up on jobs.
Now that the fog has lifted somewhat, it’s clear enough that we will at least have one more Wellington Phoenix season to get excited about. And you never know what might happen with one fluke season.
Clean sheet, three points, soon to be the temporary captain… this was a good week for Mikey Boxall. No wonder he didn’t have time to check twitter for the updates, having to rely on his barber for the news…
This one had a little bit of all those things that supposedly define the big matches. We had injury heartbreak with Mo Salah and Dani Carvajal. We had injury redemption with Gareth Bale.
You know, there’s nothing wrong with picking an inexperienced team. Just want to make that clear in case there are people out there yapping about cheapening the jersey or whatever.
Safe to say that it’ll come as no spoiler that there are City players littered throughout these teams of the season, particularly that illustrious first team.
Check this out, then. Barcelona turned up in South Africa just like they said they would and put on a show for a massive crowd at FNB Stadium in Soweto… Jeremy Brockie, of Nelson, New Zealand, got to play against Lionel Messi and the lads.
They were always going to be lifting the trophy after what they did last week. Team Wellington are too good of a team to be complacent enough to blow this with so much on the line… and besides, after a 6-0 win in the first leg the margins for error were pretty enormous.
Safe to say this squad announcement was overshadowed pretty much everywhere by the situation going on with Abby Erceg’s re-retirement… everywhere except in NZ Football’s announcement which barely even acknowledged Erceg.
Heaps of talking points from the latest Football Ferns squad which has been announced for the friendly against Japan next month. The fact that the game is taking place in Wellington is one of them, as is the quality of the opposition…