I'll wade into this carefully to help fill in some rather large blanks. I'm not going to comment on the referee’s performance because it's very easy to throw stones. I can tell you from my own experience I did New Cal v Tahiti in Honiara in 2012 Nations Cup, sent 2 off that were wrong decisions and was sent home. I was one of the more experienced officials behind O'Leary. GGW and Miles Davis were there commentating scratching their heads, 2nd Best watched from stands and even Patrick lamented about my shocker so I know first-hand about how to stuff up a WCQ and how easy it is to do that.
To pull back the curtain a little you must understand one thing - there is no money in refereeing. There is no one out there looking to put money into refereeing and there are no sponsors lining up. There are no professional referees in OFC/NZ and there will not be... probably ever. All the money in football goes into teams/players. In the Islands, people with money get a lot of mana/honour/power in sponsoring the local team. I have no issue with that as it is what it is and as a fan, it’s not about us referees. It does seem though that the public expect a matching level of performance and it does become about us when it all goes wrong.
The best example of this I can give you is that the referees enter a car in a Formula one race. All the 10 teams are kitted up and ready to roll with these machines that are capable of incredible things. In the back of the grid is the referee’s car that looks like a Flintstone mobile. That Flintstone mobile is expected to be competitive and when they are not, well what the hell is going on man!!! If the Flintstone mobile somehow does well, then everyone goes 'See? You don't need resources cause you are going well!' It’s the exception, not the norm. When you understand that, you then understand the problem in general.
Generally, the referees in the islands get very limited opportunities to get any kind of meaningful experience and coaching. Most of them are given a FIFA badge and get their 1st real dose of coaching at an OFC tournament. I have heard of a couple of guys that got their badge in their 2nd year of refereeing. For most in NZ, you would probably be looking to get into lower men’s leagues in your 2nd year let alone have a badge to referee at international level. These guys are very quiet and shy/humble people generally but such lovely guys to talk with and softly spoken. Regrettably, their personality style is not made for big stadium matches with pressure and fans going nuts. When you put them in a room with other referees on a coaching course and looking for feedback, they barely say anything because in their culture, it’s better to be silent than speak and be wrong. So how then do you give these guys the coaching they need and get them to open up? It’s very difficult. 3 of the last 4 RDOs for OFC have been from NZ (Ken Wallace, then Massimo Raveino from Tahiti, then Mark Hester (not Mike) and now its job shared between Kevin Stoltenkamp and Neil Poloso from Solomon Islands I believe) Kevin is new to the role but having seen Mark and Ken in action, they are both very good. The standard of football on their national leagues is generally the 1st 10 mins of helter skelter, the heat and lack of fitness kicks in, and then 80 mins of hoofball and tackles that come about because of tiredness. There is no assessor to give then the coaching they need to say 'hey man, this is incorrect' and as a team, they will not criticise each other cause it’s not in their culture. Any assessor that is there will generally say 'very good no issues'
With WCQ, neutrality is insisted upon by FIFA. There is no compromise on that. You can't use officials from NZ as they are in that pool so you look around at who you can use from the available countries that are neutral and can referee the game. Do you get in officials from Australia? Ok who pays for that? What budget does it come from? If it comes from referee’s budget, does that mean you have to cancel a couple of coaching courses to pay for that? If so, that’s coaching the guys need that’s taken away but then for that WCQ game..... You get in referees from Australia and you take away the limited opportunities OFC referees get. OFC officials don't venture out of OFC. Peter O'Leary was invited to the AFC Cup and that was probably the only time I know of. So then how do you get these guys experience on bigger matches? Judging by the responses on here we need better officials but no one has the answer as to HOW THIS SHOULD HAPPEN once you take away the limited opportunities to improve them and it goes around in circles.
It’s all a balancing act that no one really sees but the simple line is 'oh we need better referees'. It’s not that easy because there are so many elements in play that a lot of it conspires against this happening. All except money. It’s the root of all evil but would fix a lot of issues in referee world and provide so many more resources to help all these referees improve.
