Sarpreet the absolute standout today. Had a quiet first half, but coming more central and getting on the ball has paid dividends. Masterclass of a second half from him - Best on show.
Cacace's effort has been bloody good too, what a massive engine he's got in him. Hardly see him piss arsing around and walking - Always all action and all speed.
This kind of football is what these players are built to play, they want to play a modern game, so let them. Even if we lose, its way more enjoyable watching them play in a natural way than to force something that doesn't work full stop.
Really happy with the second half, we need to play that way the whole match. This team has another tier when they're confident and know how they want to play. I would swap Bell for Just for the balance on that account. Singh definitely night and day as the central playmaker. Garbett has the XFactor, even if he's having a quiet game he's just one of our most talented. Barring the backline howler yet again, we deserved the win. Our defense needs a better method to defend dribbly players.
First half was dire apart from the first 5 and last 5 of it. Less said about it the better.
Second half was a different story entirely. Some of the best football I've seen us play in years, Singh the standout but solid performances from everyone in the second half. That run from Payne for the goal was outstanding and the link up play was miles ahead of where it was vs Greece - shout out to the golf courses I guess?
You could really tell the belief was there after that goal and you could argue we were unlucky not to win that.
Hand on the back, nothing in it in reality, but that's not the point.
hand on player is fine, as long as there is no push/shove action. which there wasnt so the correct decision there.
There was definitely a push action, but the player was already taking a dive as it happened. Boxall did not need to touch him in any way.
Boxall having a hand in his back there is pretty standard distance management, nothing out of the ordinary at all. Very exaggerated from Ferguson but that was never going to be given given the ref allowed quite a bit of physicality throughout the game (but was pretty consistent about it).
Still a 60% performance imo. Also Ireland weren’t heavily motivated, except not to lose.
Not fluid as we can be in passing. Bell and Stamenic can play much better than that I think.
Mata I think was promising. Singh can’t play that killer ball if there aren’t any runs and Mata made a good one. He could yet be the goods. Certainly still developing.
Oh a chance to use some young folk language. Don’t sleep on Payne. Going forward, oddly enough! And he’s got an engine. He has been good for the Nix and him and Kirwan are in a duel there.
I want Libby to be more clinical, and perhaps drive into the box if there are no options.
Long story short we were better second half, but Ireland also dropped off and didn’t have the motivation to build up their intensity again.
Ireland also gave us a lot more space than Greece. I’d love us to play Greece with our top team, because I think we’d have learned more.
Anyway, much what I expected. Jury still out on the coach.
We got smoked first half and a good team would've put us to bed but in the second half i thought we were the far better team. Thought we passed through the lines well and looked the team to score and maybe go on to win. Thought it was an improved performance. And we scored from open play against a European side!
Pijnaker still gives me the craps everytime he has the ball.
Bell - needs to improve
but i loved the new keeper, looks decent especially with his distribution he was brave and pin point.
Depends whether my heart lasts that long! Hard not knowing what team's gonna show up on any given night, so glad it came right.
One of my biggest Bazeley criticisms is his lack of adjustment and sideline involvement, but he made the most of that little break after 30 mins or so to alter our line and it paid dividends. Hope we're sufficiently prepped for competitive fixtures in future
We got smoked first half and a good team would've put us to bed but in the second half i thought we were the far better team. Thought we passed through the lines well and looked the team to score and maybe go on to win. Thought it was an improved performance. And we scored from open play against a European side!
Pijnaker still gives me the craps everytime he has the ball.
Bell - needs to improve
but i loved the new keeper, looks decent especially with his distribution he was brave and pin point.
Mata looks more effective than Wood!
Yeh. can't argue with his pedigree, but Wood just seems to be coasting at times when he plays for the national team. Could be returning from injury related I guess. Showed when he got absolutely gassed off the ball when he had good possession with ball at feet just outside the penalty area. But having a centre forward that is willing to absolutely throw himself at everything like Mata did, makes a difference and adds to the teams intensity. Its only a friendly and I get that Wood is still coming back from injury and probably being a bit cautious. And can't fault his commitment to wanting to lead this team.
Nah, he just exaggerated a trivial contact. It's clever, knowing Boxall had his arm on his back the whole way. As I said, nothing in it, but no need for Boxall to do it, because another ref could have given that.
On paper, one of our best ever results, nice work :)
My FIFA+ wouldn't work in Aussie, but great to hear team played very well in the 2nd half. But a cautionary note this was Ireland 'B", they made 10 changes to their starting lineup against the Dutch. And their top team had a poor Euro qualifying campaign. But yeah we'll take it.
Be interesting to see what friendlies NZF can secure for March. Congrats to Pragnell & Co for a pretty full calendar in 2024.
That's two draws against much higher ranked opponents in the last two windows... wonder where the screaming and shouting from people after the Greece game has gone.
What is that meant to mean? We had every right to complain about the Greek game. And we have every right to be delighted by the showing today.lthomas20
That's two draws against much higher ranked opponents in the last two windows... wonder where the screaming and shouting from people after the Greece game has gone.
What is that meant to mean? We had every right to complain about the Greek game. And we have every right to be delighted by the showing today.lthomas20
That's two draws against much higher ranked opponents in the last two windows... wonder where the screaming and shouting from people after the Greece game has gone.
People taking friendly matches too seriously and feeling the need to attack the coaching staffs credentials and NZF every time a match doesn't go to plan for us.
Every time we lose a game the critics come en masse and criticise Bazeley and co, but after a good performance, there's relatively muted silence from these people. It just stinks of people having an agenda against the current coaching setup from the get-go.
Interestingly we seem to be scoring against decently ranked team (Sweden, Qatar, DRC, Ireland) more frequently under Baze than we did in the Hay days.
That's two draws against much higher ranked opponents in the last two windows... wonder where the screaming and shouting from people after the Greece game has gone.
Behave. We won't play International "B' sides too often..if anything people could be critical we didn't get a win against this lot. We were close to if not at full strength. But we are looking at the positives because that is where we are at these days.
What is that meant to mean? We had every right to complain about the Greek game. And we have every right to be delighted by the showing today.lthomas20
That's two draws against much higher ranked opponents in the last two windows... wonder where the screaming and shouting from people after the Greece game has gone.
People taking friendly matches too seriously and feeling the need to attack the coaching staffs credentials and NZF every time a match doesn't go to plan for us.
Every time we lose a game the critics come en masse and criticise Bazeley and co, but after a good performance, there's relatively muted silence from these people. It just stinks of people having an agenda against the current coaching setup from the get-go.
Interestingly we seem to be scoring against decently ranked team (Sweden, Qatar, DRC, Ireland) more frequently under Baze than we did in the Hay days.
I think context needs to be applied that these friendlies mean infinitely more to us than to any European opposition, and so effort and team selection can reflect that. Lots of complaints about injuries sustained in international breaks has no doubt got some players taking a 'meaningless' friendly a bit below max effort. Friendlies are never really read into much anywhere, but we have nothing else so we have to, bar a maximum five quadrennial qualifiers against island nations.
I agree about not taking friendlies too seriously either way, good or bad, especially once the match tensions wear off. As coochiee said, they rotated their entire side, and even then their first side have not been good. But we can look at the positives of the last half-hour once Wood went off, when we looked much better.
To be fair, Hay's weaker side also scored against Ireland four years ago. And the sides he failed to score against (Peru, Australia) are a fair few steps ahead of DRC (this window beat Mauritania 2-0 and lost to Sudan 1-0) or Qatar (this window beat Afghanistan 8-1 and India 0-3). Bazeley's side also failed to score against Australia of course, and the DRC goal was a quite dubious penalty. Costa Rica incomparable in that it wasn't a friendly. Sweden have been on a sad deflation under Janne Anderson who's now finally had his last game and they still won 4-1 with a rotated side.
Also, I have to add, the FIFA+/TVNZ coverage just seems so low effort. I get that it is now free-to-air so should have wider availability, but there just seems to be no effort. No co-commentator(s), just Glen Larmer in a studio by himself sounding like he's not overly enthused early in the morning (Saturday especially); no pre-, half-time or post-match analysis/debate or anything either. The coverage ended a minute after the whistle. Could you imagine an All Blacks test being done like that? How can you get non-tragics enthused when it seems like your organisation doesn't seem to care enough to get a second voice to make it a better broadcast? Fairly night and day to the old Sky coverage.
Even the National League coverage is no better than the last years. It's still the same broadcast production - one camera, one commentator - just on a platform which is far less mainstream than Youtube where it was last year. Even then, there used to be one game a week with TV quality broadcast, so arguably it's worse.
I get lots of people can't afford Sky, free-to-air is not the issue, Australia has perfectly fine free-to-air football on 10. Just the execution; it can't be impossible to find an ex-player or two who want to chat about the match. Hiding away your product on an obscure platform with low effort coverage will not build the game.
Ireland B was still full of professional in good leagues and clubs from Celtic to Nottingham Forest, so still a very decent side.
I don't personally believe in the whole, doesn't mean much, its only a friendly. I don't know of any international athlete who doesn't take every single game/competition seriously.
They're professionals, they have an inbuilt win mentality and in football 100's of playing dying for the opportunity to take their place and play internationally.
The 2nd half was as good a half of footy by a NZ team I can recall watching. I'm proud of that effort.
