One shot for glory

Tonight the New Zealand All Whites play Bahrain in a one-shot, winner-take-all playoff to decide which team is going to the 2010 FIFA World Cup Finals in South Africa, and which is a bunch of choking dogs who will be spurned by their nations and forced to seek asylum on a leaky boat off the coast of Indonesia. It's all ON. The Cake Tin in Wellington is completely sold out, the team anthem (fairly catchy as football songs go* despite the awful vid clip featuring fat clownsmiming badly in downtown Auckland) is all over TV and radio, and confidence in the nation's footballing talent (I use that term advisedly) is at an all time high - probably even more so than in 1981 when the All Whites won their first and only trip to the World Cup.

*Though this is damning with very bloody faint praise given the history of same is uniformly appalling, particularly England anthems as outlined here and here


It's traditional, if not a requirement of holding a passport, for Aussies to death-ride any and all Kiwi achievements in sport, largely because they do it so well in return (being ever so balanced a nation, enormous chip on both shoulders) but I'm backing the Whites in this one, even though supporting NZ in any sport feels vaguely sick and wrong. I'm backing the Whites not just because Bahrain are there on cash instead of talent, using their oil money to coach a bunch of ordinary hackers into a well-oiled (sorry) international squad, with the requisite number of 'naturalized' imports to up the skill level. Not just because the NZ squad is full of decent, likeable players from the A-League and good, honest bastards like Ryan Nelsen from Blackburn. Not just because any win for NZ football is a loss for NZ rugby, and that's something everyone can enjoy.

No, I'm backing the Whites because we Aussies know what last-chance, sudden-death World Cup qualifiers are like. They're horrendous. They're miserable and desperate and they fucking kill you to watch them. They suck. And we kinda miss them.


Australia moving into the Asian confederation did both sides of the ditch a huge favour. It meant Australia's world cup qualifying, instead of being hell-for-leather home-and-away playoffs against Uruguay or Argentina or whoever else finished 5th in South American qualifying, was a series of sensible, manageable round-robin fixtures against beatable mid-ranking sides like Oman or China. And it meant NZ not only avoided running into Australia early in qualifying, but ended up with that playoff against the fifth-placed nation, but in Asia, not South America. UR Gay or Maradona's Argies would have been an ugly prospect for the Socceroos, let alone the All Whites, given they smaaaashed our World Cup dreams in 1993 and 2001. Bahrain? That's winnable. Even for the All Whites, who looked handy in a scoreless draw in the away leg in Manama (do dooo do-do-do) Manama (do do-do-do) etc.

Then again, we've been here before, just in gold shirts rather than white ones. The fateful France '98 qualification campaign, where Australia took a precious away goal from a 1-1 draw in Tehran into the home leg of our last-chance-qualifier again Iran, at a heaving, sold-out MCG. And took a two-nil lead, 3-1 on aggregate, into the last twenty minutes of the second half. And lost on 3-3 away goals. I can still see Johnny Warren breaking down on live TV, Les Murray beside him, in the dumbstruck, deafening silence afterwards. We were in France, except we weren't, and wouldn't be. Getting towelled up 3-0 by the Uruguayans in Montevideo in the away leg in 2001 (after Kevin Bloody Muscat's penalty in the home leg put us up 1-0) was just as painful, but somehow, because it happened in the middle of the night on the other side of the world, less immediate. It was only the 2005 penalty shootout win over the same (well, slightly older) UR Gay side which finally exorcised the demons of 30-odd years of misery and got us to a world cup, where we moved our misery and frustration to a new level after our underperforming and scrappy side arsed late goals to squeak past higher-ranked Japan and Croatia in the group stage, then got gypped by a furiously dodgy penalty late in the second round against the eventual winners Italy.


By comparison, qualifying for the Big Show this time round has been a piece of piss. From the last team into Germany 2006, Straya almost became the first to qualify for Sarth Efricor 2010, just edged out by our old mates Japan. It's been great... yet strangely unsatisfying. The drama, and horror, and potential disaster and misery of a LCQ sudden death playoff, just hasn't been there for Australia.

But it will be for New Zealand. Tonight, 7.30pm NZST.
One shot for glory.



The Doctor is OUT.