But again, an improvement on previous results with Ricki doesn't mean that he did a good job. Our expectations should be higher than that. And again, yeah Hudson was missing players for the OFC nation's cup but Ricki was missing Nelsen and Reid for the horror in Honiara IIRC.
And yep, some of the kids Hudson gave caps to will be core AWs players in years to come but that doesn't mean they were ready for caps when they got them or that a future coach wouldn't have picked them. Ricki might not have done enough to blood new players before crucnh games but Hudson went too far the other way.
I've said before that my expectations for the AWs are:
- comfortably beat OFC sides. Don't have to smash them but we should be able to beat them by a couple of goals at least, even away, when you look at the difference in resources and quality of players. Even when hit by several injuries or suspensions at once.
- respectable, consistent performances in friendlies
- not getting embarrassed when we do play competitive games against non-OFC sides
I think Hudson ticked the last box but not the other two. His reign wasn't a complete disaster but it also wasn't a resounding success. I think we could and should have done better across the whole time he was here and the acceptance of things like needing extra time and penalties to win knockout games in the OFCNC is an example of how low NZ football and its fans set the bar.