Amazingly proud of our lads. A truly courageous effort that, courage under fire, defying all kinds of odds. I wonder what the odds of us getting a draw at all in the World Cup was? And yet here we are, we were undefeated, even against the incumbent World Champs the Iti's.
How good is it? I mean... a few years ago, New Zealand was a complete and utter footballing joke thanks to the Knights organisation. It was a shonk. Complete and utter waste of time. Barely 1,000 people were turning up to pro games at North Harbour. Serepisos comes along with Ricki to give us the appropriately named Phoenix, and hells bells, we put 30,000 against Beckham, and then in the finals this season in that stadium in Wellington.. WELLINGTON! Then the All Whites do a number on Bahrain, Mark Paston saves a penalty, Rory Fallon gets us there.
Wicked... and now this? Sensational! We go to the World Cup. We probably should be looking at playing something overly defensive like a 4-5-1 or a 4-4-2, instead we basically go with a 3-4-3. Sure the edge men drop back when they're not on the ball, but it's still a daring effort against technically brilliant opponents. And here we are, we weren't beaten. I don't really want to take anything away thats negative, but if De Rossi didn't do an Oscar, and perhaps even the Slovakian goal was just offside, how good would it have been for us to get the win and go through?
Either way, this is absolutely amazing, and has exceeded all my hopes for this team. Can't wait to see the welcome they get when they get back to New Zealand. Football is no longer the laughing stock of New Zealand. For even just a month, it was the pride of a nation.
