Enjoyed watching the game. Usual issues with skill set and decision making aside scoring 2 goals was great to see, and made for an exciting game. At 16 Milly Clegg looks like a great prospect, she has a real instinct for goal. Hope we can nurture that. Any chance she can get a scholarship deal at the Nix? Overall, 2 draws and a loss is not quite a pass mark for this group of players. Next up is U17 womens world cup. Supposed to be in October. But I see India has just been stripped of hosting rights by FIFA.
Enjoyed watching the game. Usual issues with skill set and decision making aside scoring 2 goals was great to see, and made for an exciting game. At 16 Milly Clegg looks like a great prospect, she has a real instinct for goal. Hope we can nurture that. Any chance she can get a scholarship deal at the Nix? Overall, 2 draws and a loss is not quite a pass mark for this group of players. Next up is U17 womens world cup. Supposed to be in October. But I see India has just been stripped of hosting rights by FIFA.
Clegg would be a great scholarship player but however can see her wanting to finish high school as her last year is next year.
Eventful flight home for some of the girls. Hope they all okay. https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/panic-on-air-nz-flight-as-masks-drop-false-emergency-declared/W7SAAPSRLW7UCUCRR3YK3HBXNE/
Just 18 players in the squad. Is that usual. Or a bit of cost cutting by NZF.
Usual for OFC age group tournaments.
Also no Milly Clegg which probably indicates where she will be in July-August
Agreed, usual, normally 18. but not hard and fast. The women’s U20 in 2017 had 19 I think. Both boys ones this cycle had more: 23 for U17 this January, 26 (!) for U20 last September. Possibly extra allowance for in case of Covid? 2018 U-17 boys had 20, but that was increased to allow for 3 players arriving late due to Chatham Cup final involvement.
Just 18 players in the squad. Is that usual. Or a bit of cost cutting by NZF.
The women U19s won the last OFC qualifying tourney (2019 in the Cooks) with 65 GF & 2 GA! Despite progress the standard of OFC Women's football remains weak. The standard of the NZ team may have risen with such a large cohort in a fulltime Weenix Academy environment now??
Also there are no US College players picked. Presumably will be a host of girls from there in contention, when the team goes to the U20 WC next year.
I see next year U20 WC is expanded to 24 teams (from 16) so presumably a 2nd OFC team makes it? In 2019 NZ won their semi against Vanuatu 11-0. They do have home team Fiji plus PNG in their pool. Maybe the 2 strongest countries in OFC women's football outside NZ. Their senior teams contested the Womens Nations Cup final in the absence of the Football Ferns.
Hopefully NZF are saving some cash to give the U20s some good WC buildup games in 2024.
NZ 1-0 up after 22 minutes. Really should be more - a few tight offside calls and a terrible call for a foul where the Fijian player just tripped herself have stopped us when through on goal.
Edit - our defence a bit lax and Fiji have had a couple chances, hitting the bar.
Yeh NZ girls a bit rattled there in the first half. Struggling to adjust to conditions and Fiji playing style. Fiji applying a lot of pressure and forcing mistakes. Somehow NZ needs to regain there composure. I'm sure the surface is not helping, but they need to adapt
11-0 over a PNG team who were frankly abysmal, commentator was saying their preparation had been really poor. Not much you can read into the performance or result from our girls even though they did put them to the sword - totally different ball game on the world stage.
There is no news on this tournament on the nzf website. Only on their instagram. Lame coverage considering how big a profile we should have coming up for female football.
11-0 over a PNG team who were frankly abysmal, commentator was saying their preparation had been really poor. Not much you can read into the performance or result from our girls even though they did put them to the sword - totally different ball game on the world stage.
Quarterfinal likely another shellacking. NZ to play 2nd in Pool C. Contenders the Solomons, Tahiti or the Cooks.
received_775955184003732.jpeg65.05 KB .... Pretty slanted bracket that!! Why does the runner up of Group A play a worse team than the winner of Group A 🤔 Unless this is wrong and there has to be a "random" quarterfinal draw like in the mens U17s?
received_775955184003732.jpeg65.05 KB .... Pretty slanted bracket that!! Why does the runner up of Group A play a worse team than the winner of Group A 🤔 Unless this is wrong and there has to be a "random" quarterfinal draw like in the mens U17s?
I saw that as well, for the mens U17 Wiki was wrong, but in this case the Wiki page reflects the Oceania football page https://www.oceaniafootball.com/u-19-womens-championship/. I wonder if the "random" draw was done in advance and they did not think to seed it so that the 2 3rd place getters could only face a group winner.
Also note today that if PNG v Fiji play out any form of draw today they both go through. The perils of 3 team groups...
Let's be brutally honest here - NZ is so far ahead of the other sides in womens tournaments that OFC and NZF should be able to come to an agreement: NZ doesn't enter the OFC comps such as this one, they others can have their Oceania Championship and genuinely contend to win it and be crowned champion, then the winner plays off against NZ for the available world cup spot.
While it's good for our players to get time to gel, beating teams 11-0 and 19-0 doesn't help with that an awful lot - it's effectively worse than a training exercise. And what exactly have the PNG and Solomon Islands players learnt from these big losses - that they are a million miles away from being as good as New Zealand?
Let's be brutally honest here - NZ is so far ahead of the other sides in womens tournaments that OFC and NZF should be able to come to an agreement: NZ doesn't enter the OFC comps such as this one, they others can have their Oceania Championship and genuinely contend to win it and be crowned champion, then the winner plays off against NZ for the available world cup spot.
While it's good for our players to get time to gel, beating teams 11-0 and 19-0 doesn't help with that an awful lot - it's effectively worse than a training exercise. And what exactly have the PNG and Solomon Islands players learnt from these big losses - that they are a million miles away from being as good as New Zealand?
But for our girls age group teams, its the only tournament experience they actually get before going to a world cup. Just look at the last U17 womens world cup in India and how under prepared our team was with no OFC tournament.
I like your concept, and its true that the other OFC nations would have a really competitive tournament with-out NZ there. But I wouldn't hold my breath on NZF having the cash to get NZ age group women's team into other tournaments elsewhere. We are just stuck in tin-pot OFC. And this is it for now. There is lots just starting to happen to push women's football in the OFC pacific Island's, Coach training, Womens champions league etc, Owain Prosser doing a fantastic job. https://twitter.com/OwainP But it will take time.
Let's be brutally honest here - NZ is so far ahead of the other sides in womens tournaments that OFC and NZF should be able to come to an agreement: NZ doesn't enter the OFC comps such as this one, they others can have their Oceania Championship and genuinely contend to win it and be crowned champion, then the winner plays off against NZ for the available world cup spot.
While it's good for our players to get time to gel, beating teams 11-0 and 19-0 doesn't help with that an awful lot - it's effectively worse than a training exercise. And what exactly have the PNG and Solomon Islands players learnt from these big losses - that they are a million miles away from being as good as New Zealand?
But for our girls age group teams, its the only tournament experience they actually get before going to a world cup. Just look at the last U17 womens world cup in India and how under prepared our team was with no OFC tournament.
I like your concept, and its true that the other OFC nations would have a really competitive tournament with-out NZ there. But I wouldn't hold my breath on NZF having the cash to get NZ age group women's team into other tournaments elsewhere. We are just stuck in tin-pot OFC. And this is it for now. There is lots just starting to happen to push women's football in the OFC pacific Island's, Coach training, Womens champions league etc, Owain Prosser doing a fantastic job. https://twitter.com/OwainP But it will take time.
In which case NZF gets the team together and they get match experience and chemistry against NZ club teams (WNL entry wouldn't even be a bad shout the year before the age group WC) or boys teams.
I see your point but I don't see what the team is getting out of beating very poor opponents 11-0 and 19-0
Let's be brutally honest here - NZ is so far ahead of the other sides in womens tournaments that OFC and NZF should be able to come to an agreement: NZ doesn't enter the OFC comps such as this one, they others can have their Oceania Championship and genuinely contend to win it and be crowned champion, then the winner plays off against NZ for the available world cup spot.
While it's good for our players to get time to gel, beating teams 11-0 and 19-0 doesn't help with that an awful lot - it's effectively worse than a training exercise. And what exactly have the PNG and Solomon Islands players learnt from these big losses - that they are a million miles away from being as good as New Zealand?
But for our girls age group teams, its the only tournament experience they actually get before going to a world cup. Just look at the last U17 womens world cup in India and how under prepared our team was with no OFC tournament.
I like your concept, and its true that the other OFC nations would have a really competitive tournament with-out NZ there. But I wouldn't hold my breath on NZF having the cash to get NZ age group women's team into other tournaments elsewhere. We are just stuck in tin-pot OFC. And this is it for now. There is lots just starting to happen to push women's football in the OFC pacific Island's, Coach training, Womens champions league etc, Owain Prosser doing a fantastic job. https://twitter.com/OwainP But it will take time.
In which case NZF gets the team together and they get match experience and chemistry against NZ club teams (WNL entry wouldn't even be a bad shout the year before the age group WC) or boys teams.
I see your point but I don't see what the team is getting out of beating very poor opponents 11-0 and 19-0
It certainly needs some outside the box thinking like you are suggesting. A lot of age grade kids are often still at High School and spread throughout the country which makes it complicated. An age grade 'Ashes series" against Australia could be another opportunity. But that is not going to emulate a tournament style environment.
Samoa verus Fiji in the other semi. Home team Fiji should win that, and at least make the Kiwis raise a sweat in the final (NZ only won the pool game 3-0).