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My knowledgeable SBS colleague, Phillip Micallef, put up an interesting story on the World Game website on Tuesday headed “Kiwis make Hay while the suns shines”, ostensibly an interview with Waitakere United captain Danny Hay ahead of the club’s Club World Cup playoff against Adelaide United in Tokyo next week.
Micallef writes that Waitakere will be “fighting for Oceania’s existence” in the match and that a positive result for the New Zealanders will be “Oceania’s chance of making the most of its rare place in the sun”.
Perhaps. But I would have thought the Kiwis are in something of a catch-22.
A good result against Adelaide will have the obvious benefits of getting the side through to the CWC and collecting some serious money – a massive fillip to a semi-amateur side.
But a win over the Asian Champions League runners-up will also reaffirm the status of Oceania as a confederation at a time when many bods in Kiwi football are assiduously trying to extricate themselves from the OFC’s clutches and join Asia.
Hay, the captain of Waitakere, is one of them.
He told Micallef: “[It’s] important that Oceania is swallowed up by Asia and New Zealand as a nation starts going into Asia on a regular basis. That’s the only way our football will grow.”
That, however, runs counter to the stated strategy of New Zealand Football boss Frank Van Hattum, who told Micallef a week ago that “our future is with Oceania. We are happy there and we do not need to join the AFC to raise our standards.”
Van Hattum seems to be happy with the status quo because as the only nation of serious clout in Oceania – that hiccup against Fiji aside – it gets virtual walk-ups to the CWC and Confederations Cup.
But, as Hay has intimated, that is a short-term panacea at best and holds no long-term benefit for New Zealand and, by extension, Oceania football.
So losing badly to Adelaide United, perversely enough, could be one of the best things to happen to football across the Tasman.
A bad loss would no doubt convince FIFA that Oceania is a folly that can no longer be tolerated and the only viable solution to the farrago is doing what many experts have been advocating for some time: that the Asian Football Confederation consumes the OFC and the AFC is divided into two distinct West Asian and East Asian zones.
New Zealand would find themselves no longer the proverbial “big fish in a very small pond” but the long-term advantages of being in Asia would far outweigh the cons, both for themselves and their Oceania stablemates.
The AFC might also get itself some joy from FIFA in additional World Cup places (or at the very least half places).
So Hay is in a rather extraordinary position.
Charged with the responsibility of winning the game for Waitakere for his superiors at New Zealand Football but privately perhaps hoping he’s on the end of a massive hiding.
Football never ceases to amaze. It’s going to be a very interesting match indeed.
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