Football fans across the country are revelling in New Zealand’s well-deserved qualification after a competitive and exciting game in the Oceania Qualifiers’ final against New Caledonia on Monday evening.
The 3-0 victory will go down as another piece of footballing history for the All Whites, making it the third time this country has succeeded in its bid to make the men’s World Cup finals.
The gap between New Zealand’s appearances at the World Cup is diminishing and reflects how our footballers have improved over the years and how much Kiwis have embraced the round ball code.
After the legendary run of the Steve Sumner-led All Whites to Spain in 1982, it was another 28 years before captain Ryan Nelsen steered the team to remarkable achievements amidst the deafening vuvuzelas of South Africa in 2010.
This time it will only be 16 years on to the North American tournament.
Current All Whites captain and Nottingham Forest forward Chris Wood was, at 18, the youngest member of the 2010 squad and, with Tommy Smith, is one of only two still playing at this level.
Unfortunately, Monday’s game in front of about 25,000 fans at Eden Park was not such a good one for Wood.
While he played a key role in creating chances up front, he fell heavily during one such attack on New Caledonia’s goal and, after limping on for a few minutes, went off with a thigh injury.
On came footballing veteran Kosta Barbarouses and shortly after, in the 62nd minute, 36-year-old defender Michael Boxall scored his first goal for the All Whites, heading in from a corner to provide the lead desperately sought by that stage of the match.
Kudos must go to New Caledonia for a strong first half and for showing increasing confidence at the start of the second until Boxall scored. Keeper Nyikeine was particularly impressive.
If the All Whites hadn’t qualified for next year, it would have been a significant shock, given the international standing of football in Tahiti, Fiji and New Caledonia. For the first time, the rules for this tournament were changed to allow the winning Oceania team direct entry to the finals.
While qualifying was not the drawn-out, nerve-racking drama Kiwi fans had to contend with in 1982 and 2010, when it was a lot harder to make it through, the All Whites’ clearly deserved their victory, one which is well worth us all celebrating.
Cloud on the horizon
The world is starting to wake up to the threat that United States President Donald Trump poses to the ability to protect lives in the face of extreme weather.
Among the deep cuts the Trump administration and his stooge Elon Musk at the so-called department of government efficiency are making are to the budgets of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
NOAA is probably the world’s most respected and authoritative scientific body, and is part of the Department of Commerce. One of NOAA’s responsibilities is the National Weather Service which, along with forecasting weather for the US, provides vast quantities of free observations and other meteorological data for weather agencies around the globe.
One of its most crucial offerings is the Global Forecast System computer model, which predicts the likely position of weather systems and storms across the planet for up to the next fortnight. The GFS model is among those used in New Zealand by our forecasters.
Budget cuts to the NWS and job losses are already affecting its ability to collect the critical ground and upper-air observations needed for these computer models. The agency is becoming a victim of Trump’s war on science, especially climate-change science.
Severe weather is no respecter of international borders. It is an alarming scenario, but by no means an unlikely one, that reductions in the quality and coverage of these models could have repercussions on the accuracy of future storm warnings, and on lives and livelihoods, in our part of the world.
