Hudson is a charlatan and the incompetence of NZF has rippled through our whole setup.
Remember Hudson's PowerPoint? He talked about getting a core group of players together and get them used to playing a specific style in regular games, and getting our age group sides playing the same aligned style.
Instead we're still picking new guys in the squad, or bringing back players who Hudson has never picked before (like Fallon). Hudson's much touted style has devolved into pure hoofball. The eligibility shambles robbed us of the Olympics but we've also reached the point where we are turning down friendlies against quality sides.
Absolutely nothing that Hudson and Martin said they would do has been done. No progress has been made since they came in, in fact we have even gone backwards.
We have reached a point where our primary tactic is hitting long balls to a 34 year old targetman who doesn't currently have a club and who has only played 17 mins of 4th tier football this year.
And people are wondering why others are fudged off?
Look I'm no Hudson apologist-
but surely a lot of this is the fault of NZF not getting us games.
Also his key job here is to win the tournament. He's rested 3 of his key ball players- Marco, Kosta and WeeMac- or correctly they've just got off the plane, and this is a short tournament where we might expect to see some tactical variation.
Not to forget that in plenty of games against Island teams we have been attacked physically: our last game against Tahiti they were simply trying to hit our players any time there was contact in the air and last cup our chances were severely dented by Mark Paston being kicked out of it.
Considering all the sharke that has gone down am I unhappy for us finally to be playing some football and actually winning? No.
To get better friendlies we need to win this tournament. And want to play them of course!
I think it doesn't hurt to bring in Fallon with the amount of experience that has been lost, and he did the job for us this time. I wouldn't necessarily expect him to be plan 'A', but I'm not unhappy with him in the squad. Watson had to be pushing for a spot, but he has also been prone to getting sent off or mouthing off and that would have been a disaster at say 2-1 yesterday.
I'm just happy that the AWs are finally playing and I'm dead keen to see them win. If they can look a little better than yesterday sure, but also in 2010 our strength was a strength. Sure we don't want to be kicking the ball back to quality teams, but think of players bouncing off Watson in the HK sevens. If we are good at that, we shouldn't rule it out as a tactical option. It's one way to win.