NZ should pull out all stops to get this tournament in NZ. Play it mid winter in Invercargill. Time to get hard nosed with the rest of Oceania.....we are the biggest fish in this pond. Can't believe we don't have anyone on the executive.
I know its flogging a dead horse but FFS Oceania is such a shiite Confederation. I don't think there are many people who believe that its in our best interest to belong to this shambles. How to move out is a completely different story.
When you look at the recently announced Asian WC qualifying pools you can see how much better things could be for the AW;s. We would be competitive in any of the pools announced.....and it would give us some interesting games to follow. We could be playing home and away against teams like Japan and beatable teams like Vietnam, Malaysia etc. At least we would see these games on TV and there would be decent crouds at these games. Plus the fans would get to follow the ebb and flow of a proper table of results
Instead we could be facing a mickey mouse playoff tournament in some Pacific shiite hole with a crap surface and a third world ref. TV is not interested, nor are sponsors, media or casual sports fans. Every other country on the planet , no matter what their standard, in all the other Confederations, get to have proper playoffs.....not us. End of rant!!!!!
However, although there are a handful of decent sides, there are also a lot of mediocre sides in Asia which would be no more attractive to the public than the Pacific Island countries.
Just look at the Socceroos' group drawn this week:
Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Bangladesh anyone?
Even the toughest team in their group, Jordan won't attract the punters in Australia, nor would they here....
Plus, climatic conditions, travel etc. can be even more difficult in Asia than the Pacific e.g. Japan are drawn to play Syria and Afghanistan - could be a few problems there considering Japanese hostages were executed in Syria recently !!!
Think your wrong there, Socceroo's have played in front of crouds of no less then 20k for the pass 10 years why would that stop now?.
When I watched the Roos beat Wales back in 2012 (?) the turn up in Cardiff was pitiful, both from the Welsh and Aussies. I ran into about 10 kiwis there, which was about the size of the Aussie turnout!