All Whites vs Samoa | Mon 18th Nov | 7:30pm | Go Media Stadium, Penrose

Stamenic finally gets that goal.

Jeepers another goal before I could write “Woodsy”!!!!!

Listening to these commentators makes me wish I was deaf.

Half a Pint

Wood gets his hattrick - will that be the cue to sub him?

And it is…

mrsmiis

And Marko! I spoke too soon

Nah, you were still bang though. Marko hasn't been at his best by any stretch

Libby on, happy Wood is getting a rest after the hatty.

And we bring Just and Cacace on... doesn't get any easier for Samoa

Buffon II

Listening to these commentators makes me wish I was deaf.

Let’s pray piney calls the March games.  My dream is for him to team up with chotey as his co-commentator.  But it’s never happened on tv.  😢 

Great touch from De Vries for that goal!

Have Samoa been a lot more resilient defensively than we thought? Absolutely. Has that had anything to do with us massively over hitting a dozen crosses? Nope

Kosta on now for the last 15 - Garbett off

Would love to see him get on the scoresheet

Glen Watson is a professional and good to listen to. Goran not so much, prefer him for Kiwi football fix or half time/pre game/post game shows.

Absolutely gotta get Piney on the March games

Also given how strange this match has been, I think Samoa is largely immune to the OFC curse of running out of steam in the second half - you can't get tired if you don't leave your own defensive third

Jesus, Gillion is bloody rapid isn't he?

Gillion Mbappe. I must admit, I laughed.

Fudge he’s on a tear isn’t he

Eli Just gets the 7th

Eli Just stop scoring bangers impossible challenge

Standard Elijah Just banger.

YoungHeartHM

Jesus, Gillion is bloody rapid isn't he?

Gillion Mbappe. I must admit, I laughed.

Would be even better if he could do something with it. LMAO Gillion Mbappe YEAH RIGHT

7 minutes added time! 😂

Bring back the bog standard 3-4 minutes and be done with it man.

ballane

YoungHeartHM

Jesus, Gillion is bloody rapid isn't he?

Gillion Mbappe. I must admit, I laughed.

Would be even better if he could do something with it. LMAO Gillion Mbappe YEAH RIGHT

 To be fair now what the heck has Kylian done this year? Apt comparison perhaps

Paulsen should take it.

Was just about to say Waineo will be disappointed not to score yet today... good to see him bag that

ballane

YoungHeartHM

Jesus, Gillion is bloody rapid isn't he?

Gillion Mbappe. I must admit, I laughed.

Would be even better if he could do something with it. LMAO Gillion Mbappe YEAH RIGHT

I just liked the play on words to be honest. I appreciate a good bit of wit.

How are people saying this Samoa keeper is any good his positioning is total sharke.

Get up man. They're just going to add 3 minutes on to the end of this for the most nonsense non injury ever.

Buffon II

How are people saying this Samoa keeper is any good his positioning is total sharke.

come on mate, I don't think anyone's exactly calling for him to get a pro contract or anything, but he's put in an admirable shift for sure

I'm actually disappointed with the lack of intent from Samoa to actually try and play or make a pass, just aimlessly thumping the ball up field even the odd occasion  when a pass was actually on. 

Jazzy Jeff

Have Samoa been a lot more resilient defensively than we thought? Absolutely. Has that had anything to do with us massively over hitting a dozen crosses? Nope

And that was evidenced with some Wood frustration at times today. Not enough quality crosses for him to finish off. If we can't do it with utter dominance against Samoa, you just fear we won't make use of our red hot EPL striker when we go back to playing half decent sides.

We were wasteful and overall didn't perform as good as against Vanuatu, but we had a better second half and credit where credit is due to Samoa, Fatu, and the coaching staff.

Will absolutely take the 8-0 win, I would rather see us get a solid scoreline but still see opposition like Samoa put up some fight, then absolutely destroy and humiliate them.

Just one more window and it will all be over.

Agree, they have been quite condescending in my view

Buffon II

Listening to these commentators makes me wish I was deaf.

Pleased for Samoa keeping it below 10 when people were talking about many more 

And the All Whites facebook page is once again filled with the "we need to play better teams!!" people.

Yeah we do in literally every non-qualifiers window, they just aren't paying attention

We don't learn too much from this window. We were expected to win both games pretty comfortably, and we did.

No doubt a few quick goodbyes in the sheds from the European based lads before scrambling down to AKL for their Singapore departure. Travel safe lads and see you in March.

We got exactly what we expected from the games... and no injuries outside those that already had them coming in.

Pretty much a win win.

The Bazeley post match interview pretty much summed up the general feeling.

Despite excitable Paladin's efforts ('I really enjoyed the game'), straight bat Baze was fairly apathetic, thoughts already elsewhere.

His comments along the lines of -
"Did what we had to do. Didn't learn much of use apart from how we need to be better against weaker teams when we have all the ball, faster movement etc. They parked the bus, their keeper made some good saves. We quickly move to focussing on March. We won't judge the players much on these games, we will more be carefully watching now how they go at their clubs"

Crowd 5,327

coochiee

The Bazeley post match interview pretty much summed up the general feeling.

Despite excitable Paladin's efforts ('I really enjoyed the game'), straight bat Baze was fairly apathetic, thoughts already elsewhere.

His comments along the lines of -
"Did what we had to do. Didn't learn much of use apart from how we need to be better against weaker teams when we have all the ball, faster movement etc. They parked the bus, their keeper made some good saves. We quickly move to focussing on March. We won't judge the players much on these games, we will more be carefully watching now how they go at their clubs"

Crowd 5,327

 This game didn't need to be in Auckland, that much is clear

Put it next to his Prem player of the month trophy I say

I'd say a bunch of kids have got to see their heroes or add new ones. No injuries. The coaching staff get to work on things and see a few weaknesses and stengths more clearly. And the players build a little more synergy and relationships and understanding of each other's play. While the top pros help set standards and expectations. Its all good.

Sure the grown ups amongst us want to see us play the USA or a half decent other Americas or Euro side and be challenged. And that'll come after we've done the job in Oceania. But for building the profile of the game and getting the team in NZ this is good, its not overly expensive and its not useless for team prep. 

I've a rugby mate who we drag along to Phoenix games who, bugger me, watched the Vanuatu game and said actually it was pretty good and NZ scored some great goals. That's how you build the following and appreciation for the side. He'd turn his nose up if we were losing 4-0 vs USA.

Anyway just thoughts and maybe a slightly different perspective.

Frankie Mac

LondonChris

theaucklandphoenixfan

Ticketek is down. Trying to get myself a ticket and has not been working all morning. Really frustrating 

Yeah its been down all day. I bought tickets last week but cant access them in the ticketek app. I see them in there but cant open them or share them etc to get the QR code. I have a feeling its going to be chaos at the gates tongiht (unless people already downloaded their QR codes)

Has there been any comms from anyone about the Ticketek site being down? It feels like there is only going to be about 5,000 people there, but it will take us all about 30 minutes to actually get in.

There were a couple of hundred outside at kick-off.

The incredible thing was their manual procedures involved hand-writing section + row + seat numbers onto tickets as you purchased them at the kiosk when the smart thing to do would've been to do that hand writing earlier in the afternoon and speed up the time of each manual transactioh.

Fortunately NZ did the decent thing and did not score in the first 15 minutes.