Editorial: Heavy weight of expectation

OPINION: Not since a January night in Singapore 27 years ago has so much rested on a New Zealand football match.

Defeat Bahrain at Westpac Stadium tonight and the All Whites will be rubbing shoulders with the superstars of the global game at the World Cup in South Africa next year. Lose and they will be watching on television with the rest of us.

Thus far, the team's campaign has lacked the epic quality of the 1982 odyssey that made a bunch of amateur and semi-professional footballers household names in a rugby nation.

By the time John Adshead's men played China in Singapore for the final place at the 1982 World Cup, they had already played 14 other qualifying matches, travelled more than 80,000 kilometres and overcome seemingly insurmountable obstacles.

Just to force the playoff with China, they had to defeat Saudi Arabia, a side they had drawn with at home, by five goals, in Riyadh. Improbably, they did. Then they defied the odds again by defeating China in Singapore.

When Ricki Herbert's men play Bahrain in front of a sold- out crowd of 35,000 spectators tonight, they will be playing just the eighth match of their campaign. Before drawing with Bahrain in the first leg of their playoff they had had to beat only Fiji, New Caledonia and Vanuatu. No team has been offered an easier run to the World Cup finals.

Nevertheless, the match represents a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for the players and a once-in-a-generation opportunity for Football New Zealand. Victory will not only give the players a share of the US$10 million (NZ$13.5m) that goes to each of the 32 countries whose teams qualify for the finals, it will also give them an opportunity to showcase their skills on the world's biggest sporting stage.

For football administrators, the stakes are almost as high. The crowd will be the biggest to watch a football match in this country. Not every spectator will be as familiar with the nuances of offside traps and 3-4-3 formations as they are with shortened lineouts, flat backlines and "clearing out" rucks, but interest in the game is growing.

One has only to scan the winter fixtures list in The Dominion Post to see that the number of children playing football – a significant number of them girls – outweighs the number playing the national game, rugby. But there is a disconnect between what the children play and what they watch.

The Wellington Phoenix draw crowds similar in size to those drawn by teams competing in rugby's third-tier national provincial championship, but national league sides are lucky to attract 1000 spectators. The children who play football watch rugby.

For the game to develop, the children need local heroes to follow and emulate. Qualification for the World Cup finals will produce them.

If the All Whites make it to the World Cup finals in June, school playgrounds will be as full of Ryan Nelsens and Shane Smeltzes performing stepovers and Cruyff turns as as they are of Richie McCaws and Dan Carters throwing dummy passes and kicking up-and-unders.

Football will never supplant rugby in the affections of New Zealanders, but sports fans of all persuasions will be cheering for the All Whites tonight.

- © Fairfax NZ News