Oceania Football searches for challenger to NZ women's reign

Transcript

The search is on for someone to compete with the New Zealand Football Ferns after they once again dominated the Oceania Football Confederation's showpiece tournament.

New Zealand won the OFC Women's Nations Cup in Papua New Guinea, booking a place in next year's World Cup at the same time.

The tournament was notable for the Ferns one-sided scorelines but as Koro Vaka'uta reports, there is hope that may change in the future.

New Zealand beat Tonga, Papua New Guinea and the Cook Islands during the cup, scoring 30 goals in the process and conceding none. The OFC Head of Competitions Michael Song was not surprised by the week's efforts. Song says the Football Ferns are on another level in the region.

MICHAEL SONG: New Zealand is now ranked number 19 in the world.  Other teams, there is obviously a gap between New Zealand and the rest.  To their credit they work really hard in their own country, they keep track of their overseas players and they are working hard to develop women's football.

The Cook Islands coach Jimmy Katoa agrees work is being done but there is the added difficulty of bringing players together at short notice for tournaments.

JIMMY KATOA: Getting players from all over.  We get players from Raro, we had two from Christchurch and four from Auckland so yeah it's been difficult, really difficult.  We only had a few days to get the team ready.  You really want a few more weeks where you've got the whole squad so you can really work on what you want to do when you get to the tournament.

Katoa says migration is always an issue in the islands despite the popularity of the sport.

JIMMY KATOA: There's a lot of young ones coming through but the other problem we have is that we have all these girls who come through and then they come through school and a lot of them migrate to New Zealand or Australia so it's very hard to keep tag of them.  So what we do, we try to put some databases so there is always a gap, some space for them whenever they get selected.

The head of women's football in Tonga Adelaide Tu'ivailala says the sport is growing there, with club numbers increasing and 40% of participants in the Just Play children's programme being female.  However more can be done.

ADELAIDE TU'IVAILALA: We're trying to get some more activities, more funds.  At the moment New Zealand is on top and they're getting girls to play football when they are five, six, seven years old but I think that's what Tonga is trying to do.  The same thing as get the girls identified because they have the talent to prepare them at that right age.

Michael Song says there are signs the gap will close soon and gives the examples of Tonga and PNG's performances at the recent U20 tournament in New Zealand as the reason why.

MICHAEL SONG: Tonga and Papua New Guinea did really well.  They only lost to New Zealand by two goals to three goals and we can see that the next generation is very promising for the OFC and national associations .  We just need to ensure that the girls keep playing the sport and keep dedicating themselves to the game so that come next Women's Nations Cup tournament they make more progress.

Song says the onus is on the individual associations to compile busier schedules for their teams to keep them competitive.