All Whites need to be ready for World Cup

BY DANNY HAY

OPINION: Now the All Whites have qualified for the World Cup, they now need to make sure they are up to the task when they fly into South Africa next year.

Last night's World Cup qualification has secured football bosses in New Zealand a great injection of money from Fifa.

And I think they need to commit a big chunk of those funds into a proper pre-tournament build-up.

It will be tough when we get there, in terms of winning games. But I think it will be all about credibility.

For us to even get there is like us winning the World Cup. But to give us the best chance, they need to try and get the boys together as much as possible before now and then.

If we can get games against any good opposition then it will be a good thing. It is not like before when we wanted to play Asian sides because we knew we would have this Asian qualifier - there was no point in going to South America and playing a heap of those sides.

But now in all likelihood we might get one European side, one Asian side and one South American side in our group. So you just want to get games against anybody of decent quality to test our boys.

The more they play together, they better they seem to get.

There were a lot of things said and written in the lead-up to the clash against Bahrain in Wellington. And I really took issue with comments that the All Whites would be disgraced if they made it all the way. People who talk like that need a reality check.

This isn't rugby - we are not in all likelihood going to have a chance of winning the thing, but there are 200-plus nations who play football and there are just half a dozen who play rugby.

So by being part of the top 32 teams in the world is massive.

We need to get our heads out of the sand as a country and understand how big football is worldwide. Most people who have lived overseas actually understand that - they realise it is a massive, massive game.

Just finally, I really hope our soccer administrators take advantage of what the All Whites have now achieved. We have to learn from the mistakes of 1982.

There is a huge amount of momentum behind football at the moment and the administrators need to make sure they grab that and run with it.

They didn't do that in 1982 - hopefully they have learn from their mistakes.

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