fifa finally announce.....

.....that oceania has a direct entry into the world cup...

yes it has been a long time coming and finally the winner of the oceania competition no longer has to play a south american team, but go straight into the finals...

fabulous news... although we'll have to play out of our skins to beat australia's number one team, as they seem to be a class above us

bloody great news this

havent we beaten Aussie before though?

Yes D-Man, we beat Aussie the last time we played them I think ...but Aussie couldn't afford to get all their players back from Europe at the time.

yes it's a tough ask to beat the aussies but that's the great thing about football. upsets are always possible.
we've beaten them before and we'll beat them again. hopefully in an all important world cup play-off

wahoo!!! About time too!!!!

Maybe we'll see the All Whites @ the world cup in Germany 2006. I sure hope so!

Im not so sure this is a good thing, I would prefer to see NZ and Australia thrown into the Asian qualifiers like we were in 1982.

I say this because I believe the All Whites need regular top opposition, not once every four years battling to hopefully pip the Aussies 1-0

The thing is, you can bet your arse the Aussies will get their top players back for a couple of games/mini tournament amongst NZ, Solomon Islands, Fiji etc if the WC is at stake, so realistically they will qualify more often than not

What will happen then is they will go to the Cup and hugely improve, therefore widening the gap between the NZ and Aussie quality of football

Another option instead of Oceanic direct entry was to throw the top two Oceanic teams and the extra WC spot into the Asian pool.

This would have resulted in a two year qualifying campaign, great to watch

Now what will happen is...... unless we can pull off the upset 1st up, Aussie will go and get pretty good, making it almost impossible for NZ to ever get there

The front page of the Sydneys Daily Telegraph:

"WE'RE IN"


Pretty much sums up what they think of NZ

Aussie arrogrance for you eh Muzik

Totally, f*cks me off too, especially when you have to live with it everyday!

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/12/17/1039656396467.html

lol, at least they back themselves.

Headlines like that just make beating all the more satisfying. We would struggle to beat a team of their best players more than about 1 in every 10 attempts.

One of the main reasons we got this spot was the deal down by the NZ chairman of oceania (can't remember his name) in return for abstaining in the vote that gave the world cup to germany over south africa. People who criticised him then and are happy with this decision now should be eating humble pie.

World cup for what? There aree so many silly little sports having world cups, whats this one for?

Charlie Dempsey

Joking I hope fish_boy

He wont be

fish_boy has the sporting knowledge of a gnat Im afraid

sheesh fish_boy...

this is the only world cup that really matters... the biggest sporting event on the planet. the football world cup. or the soccer world cup as most new zealanders have to refer to it as...

jah: i think we'd be lucky to beat ozzie's number 1 team once in every 30 games... with likes of kewel and viduca coming back our boys wouldn't stand much of a chance...

but it is good news... the world cup is about representation from accross the world, not necessarily the best teams in the world... this has always been a point of debate, but i think our football will only improve because of it in NZ, it may be slow but we will get there

Oh that world cup, the fairies in tutu's world cup.

ugh.......must....not.....react....to.... *grunt*....obvious.....wind...up...FUCKYOUFISHBOYFOOTBALLRULZ!!!!!

arrrrrr

GRRR
man thats wickid news, il have to support two teams now if nz make it, my home country (England ) and NZ

gonna be bloody hard to make it though