Despite the farcical officiating, we 100% deserved to lose. I am gutted for the boys but they didn't do enough. Not a single convincing goal scored against non Oceania team recently, of course we were going to struggle against 12. Bell was jaded all game. Lewis came alive in the last 15, Tuiloma offered nothing. There are definitely big gaps in quality within the team. I.e Payne and Kirwan. Wood has 0 support. Our plan the last few years has been hoof it to wood. What does one expect when he tires?
How does anything that happened in games before equate to deserving a loss in a 1 off match? Peru were way better than Costa Rica and only beat us by a lucky goal, Oman were better than Costa Rica and we drew 0-0.
We could have been more clinical for sure, and yeah some of our stars seemed a little off their game. But, this is one loss that has nothing to do with the NZL players or management failing.
We should have done better to defend their goal, and that's about all we could have changed.
It simply comes down to either incompetence by the officials (mistakes happen), but it is clear that the VAR team were watching one team and one team only - and that was proven by the fact the leaping tackle on Bill T close to the 85th minute was totally ignored. Even an incompetent VAR team would have reviewed that and had it looked at. But this lot didnt.