It's nearly 10 years ago now when the Southampton FC media team decided to play one of the strangest and most obscure April Fools jokes that I can remember. On the 1st April 2013, then Saints forward Rickie Lambert announced that he was looking to switch his nationality and represent New Zealand, only to come out less than 24 hours later to admit it has just been a prank for April Fools day.
I must admit that when I heard this at the time it got me excited as Rickie had just banged in his 100th goal for Southampton and was just about to complete his first full season in the Premier League before a big move to Liverpool the following year. He was well known as a prolific striker in the lower divisions of the Football League, helping Southampton to back to back promotions to the EPL before previously staring for Bristol Rovers before that, and had taken the Premier League by storm that season.
I imagined the potential partnership with Chris Wood up top for the AWs and how his experience and ability would bolster our playoff chances looking to qualify for the 2014 FIFA WC in Brazil. I think I even went straight on my laptop to the FM13 editor and changed Lambert's nationality so I could play out a couple of seasons as NZ manager.
But then the joke became clear.
It still confuses me how the joke came about. Why New Zealand? And why Rickie Lambert?
Lambert played alongside former AW midfielder Leo Bertos at Rochdale back in 2004, while the physio at Southampton at the time of the prank was a Kiwi too.
Lambert went on to play for England a couple of years later scoring a goal on his international debut against Scotland with his first touch, going to to earn 11 caps in total.
But what if this would have been true? How many caps could he have won for NZ, and what could he have achieved? Lambert spent the next couple of seasons relatively uninjured before picking up problems in his season at West Brom in 2015.
He would have made his NZ debut against Saudi Arabia in September 2013, and perhaps could have positively influenced one or both of the next two friendlies against UAE and Trinidad & Tobago, but highly unlikely that his inclusion in the squad would have changed the crushing 9-3 aggregate defeat to Mexico in the playoffs that November, although the home fans would have got a first glimpse of their newly adopted hero in the return leg in Wellington.
We failed to win any of our 5 Friendly internationals in 2014, but had Lambert been around we may have got a result against either South Africa or China.
I think he may have gone on to play over 25 times, definitely been involved in the 2016 OFC Cup in PNG, as well as the 2018 World Cup qualifiers and potentially the 2017 FIFA Confederations Cup before hanging up his boots. What if Lambert had been around for the Peru double header when Woodsy was struggling with injury? A Lambert goal in the first leg against Peru could have changed everything, saved Anthony Hudson his job, seen NZ qualify for Russia 2018 and prolonged Lambert's own domestic career after failing to find a new team after leaving Cardiff City in 2017. Hey, he may have even joined the Phoenix for a season?
We'll never know, but in an alternative reality I'd like to believe something like this really happened.
