The All Whites can’t seem to decide whether to love or hate the Socceroos. One minute they seem hell-bent on kicking their fellow World Cup finalists off the park. The next violins are playing and love is breaking out.
The result is confusion.
No-one is sure, therefore, how the traditionally fierce trans-Tasman rivalry will play out when Australia and New Zealand lock horns in Monday’s farewell friendly at the MCG.
Kiwi striker Rory Fallon got the pot boiling earlier this week in Auckland, saying there was no such thing as a “friendly”.
The New Zealanders were not going to take a backward step, he said.
They were going to get “stuck in” and there could be injuries.
Over the ditch in Melbourne, Socceroo hard man Vince Grella bit back.
He described Fallon’s outburst as “unprofessional” and “disappointing”, and said he would not wish any player from either team to suffer an injury so close to next month’s World Cup finals in South Africa.
But when the Australian and NZ captains got together in Melbourne on game eve, it was a different story.
Maybe it helps that Lucas Neill and Ryan Nelsen are old mates who played English premiership football together at Blackburn.
Whatever the case, both sounded like peace prize candidates.
Nelsen called the Socceroos “great guys”, lamented the absence of injured goalkeeper Mark Schwarzer and lauded the Australian team’s “golden generation” of players.
Neill congratulated the All Whites on qualifying for their first World Cup in 28 years, and hoped they would do the southern hemisphere proud.
Nelsen was particularly effusive in his praise.
“You guys (Australia) have been so lucky that you’ve had an absolutely incredible golden generation of players,” he said.
“The Emertons, The Grellas, the Chipperfields, the Neills, Schwarzers, the Moores – oh, you could go on for ages from that 29 to 33 age group,” he said, without even mentioning Harry Kewell or Tim Cahill.
Nelsen hoped Socceroo goalie Schwarzer would recover as soon as possible from a thumb injury because Schwarzer was a “fantastic guy and a fantastic keeper and servant for Australian football”.
(The All Whites skipper was definitely crying crocodile tears, though, when he said he was “gutted” Schwarzer would not be playing).
“We know the Australian players pretty well, they know us, and they’re a good bunch of guys,” he continued.
“There is a big rivalry.
“But I think they understand, and so do we, it’s just the first stage of what we hope is a fantastic five or six weeks.
“We want to do well, but performance is the most important thing for us.”
Nelsen saw parallels between New Zealand’s dramatic qualification against Bahrain last November and Australia’s “spectacular” penalty shoot-out win over Uruguay four years earlier.
He was even enthusiastic about Socceroo sponsorships.
“Why can’t we get sponsored by Solo full lemon?” he asked as he picked up a soft drink at a news conference.
“It’s fantastic, isn’t it?”
Maybe it’s all part of a psychological ploy by the Kiwis to unsettle Australia by being nice.
Why can’t they just hate us like they always do?
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