NZ 5th place Play Off Home Game

...but...but...but...the Shore... it's a hotbed of football... Hard News2008-09-09 12:01:15

The first game is here, second away. Done deal.

Regardless of where it is.....get there.  As I've said elsewhere....it MUST MUST MUST sellout.  Biggest game of football in NZ for 27 years.....

porirua park would easily sell out

It's exactly that - ONE playoff game. If there were more then I'd outright insist on spreading them around. I'm pretty sure the plan for the OFC games was v. Fiji at NHS, v. Vanuatu at the RoF, and (as was rumoured before Winston screwed everything up) vs. New Caledonia at QE2,

So no matter what, by having the game at one location, you're depriving every other location. So it's best you make the most of what you have and making sure that one game is as successful as possible.

Westpac and Mount Smart (discounting NHS due to size) are about the same size if you add temporary seating to both, if not then Westpac is bigger. So you'd not really deprive anyone in terms of seats available. So it's best to have it in a location where it's more likely every one of those seats (or at least more of those seats) is taken. Which is obviously Wellington due to the track record of this regions support of football and football events - as well as our accessibility to the rest of the country (central location means less travel needed on the whole).

That being said, there will hopefully be other games. Get some home friendlies and tour the country. Have a friendly in Auckland, Hamilton, Christchurch, Dunedin etc...then the playoff in Wellington.

And FTR I'd go see the game even if it was held in Auckland. I just think it would be unwise for NZF to do so.

I was more digging at the attitudes as opposed to the possible action.

No, to the left of my post... each and every post.

My avatar.

I might be half Aussie and originally from that side of the ditch, but when it comes to football I'm with ya there FORZA ALL WHITES!

I think the game should be played in Auckland. In saying that I'll be there no matter where it is.

The games will be on 14 & 18 November 2009 - I think. That's when the International Match Calendar has allowance for games and I think the AFC will have their 5th place playoff on 10 & 14 October.

after all that, odds are I'll be on my oe by november 2009.

Isn't AMI missing a stand at the moment.  Will it be back up to capacity by then?

Regardless of where it is going to be played, the marketing needs to have started already.  There have been a couple of articles in the paper, but more is needed.

Time for some ballsy leadership.

Ahh, all this thread was missing was a cantab wearing his red and black eye patch. Thank you for completing the thread and giving me a chance to quote Homer Simpson all in one post:

As I keep saying, this game will be in Asia, so no need to worry about that...

I don't get your bloc5 avatar any more, just a picture of a head.

No, it's been done, first game is here.

EDIT: At least according to my trusty source who's rarely wrong on these things.el grapadura2008-09-10 10:31:13

Radio Sport are doing there best to rally up a crowd for tonight. Just heard the CEO say Auckland are the favourites but tonight will have an effect. The more i think about it the more i think it would be the greatest road trip ever up to Auckland for the game, imagine 2 or 3 thousand of us descending on albany, would also make it easier and cheaper to fly to the asian game.
Would that also be a factor for the team, i know the flight from Auckland to welly is minimal but if they can get a direct flight out of Auckland and not from Welly to where they are going then surely it would be beneficial for the team as i presume they will fly out the morning after the game ( if el grads source is right)

After I said Nov14 & 18 2009, I see some sites are claiming Nov14 & 21 2009 for the Asia-Oceania playoff. As Nov 21 is not a FIFA international match date, unlike Nov 18, I'm not sure how accurate the 21st can be - surely it would be played within the FIFA Calendar?

I've been doing the same thing, and also saw the confusion over the dates for the 2nd leg, but I think you're right with the 18 November date, it's FIFA date, and those kind of play-offs have operated on a 4-day turnaround in the past. Although the travel arrangements could be tricky depending on who the opponents are, so guess we'll see.

The source of information for the draw is a fairly reliable gentleman in the employ of the football federation of a certain European country whom I happen to know. I've tried to verify it on-line, but haven't been able to, but I've emailed him so hopefully he'll be able to straighten it out.

[QUOTE=joachim [/QUOTE] nightz2008-09-10 18:50:21

Despite pre sales of less than 500 tickets, North Harbour Stadium is expecting a big crowd for tonight's All Whites world cup football qualifier against New Caledonia.

...like tonight.

yep, with heaps more media coverage this week (due to qualifying for play-off and confed)  than prior to the Welly game

We can make all the excuses in the world, but we got 2.5k here and I'm still ashamed by that.

6.5k officially tonight - not bad for a sh*t Wednesday night and sod all advertising.

HN for me the biggest problem wasn't the wednesday night, it was the 6pm kick off (so that Chris Killen, who didn't even end up playing, could get on an early flight back to Celtci).  That's just wrong for so many reasons...you just can't get there at 6!  james dean2008-09-10 22:53:57

Regardless of what city hosts our play-off match I'll hopefully be heading there, but I don't think Wellington should be much ahead of the other cities in the race for it.

People continually talk about Auckland's abysmal crowds, but fact of the matter is their city has hosted two useless teams, and if the Phoenix were as bad as the teams they had then Phoenix crowds would probably drop to a low level as well.  It can be argued that crowds were still quite small for the Kingz even when they weren't doing badly, but that was the NSL and it was not as big a thing as the a-league is now, so that shouldn't detract from Auckland.

Wellington has a pro football team that has done reasonably well and they've had good crowds which is good, but as I said earlier, if the standard slipped to that of the Knights, crowds in Welly would be the same.  And we saw the crowd for the All Whites game against Vanuatu didn't we?  Simply shocking.  You can't count on support for the Phoenix carrying over for national games (the Vanuatu game being proof).

Christchurch had an All Whites game without Vicelich, Elliot, Killen, Nelsen, Moss (we had Nicholson in goal!) etc and we had a crowd in excess of 10 000.  We had two Phoenix matches and had crowds over 4 000 for each one, both games being in the pre-season (one only a friendly).

In all honesty Christchurch has a better record than any of the other cities, but as I said, regardless of where it is played I will hope to go along too it. loyalgunner2008-09-10 23:06:07