1982: every month was Movember for the All Whites

Ahhh, 1982 – when every month was Movem­ber for the All Whites, and our bewhiskered team of Brit­ish ex-pats and hard-graft­ing loc­als (and Wyn­ton Rufer) took on the likes of Brazil at that year’s Foot­ball World Cup.

It’s been a long time since the All White’s graced the stage of the World Cup Finals, but, amaz­ingly enough, over the next few months there’s an (out­side) chance of the lads going ‘all the way’ again.

Since Aus­tralia has joined the Asia Con­fed­er­a­tion, the Ocean­ia group is now pretty much there for the tak­ing by the Kiwi boys. Bar­ring dis­asters like the 2006 cam­paign’s loss to the Solomon Islands, New Zea­l­and is most likely to go through and face the 5th-ranked Asi­an qual­i­fi­er (again, a pleas­ant change from pre­vi­ous qual­i­fy­ing rounds, where the Ocean­ia qual­i­fi­er would have to battle past the 5th-ranked South Amer­ic­an nation), in a home-and-away play­off for a spot in the 2010 World Cup Finals.

Giv­en the cur­rent Asi­an rank­ings, that’s most likely to be one of Saudi Ara­bia, Japan, Bahrain or Uzbek­istan – any one of whom the New Zeal­ander­’s would fancy upset­ting on a good day.

But before this can hap­pen, the All Whites need to nail down the Ocean­ia qual­i­fy­ing pool, and, to that end, you can help by head­ing down the Sta­di­um this Wed­nes­day even­ing and cheer­ing on the team to a win over Vanuatu – a win that would guar­an­tee our spot as top team in the Pacific.

New Zea­l­and v. Vanuatu
Wed­nes­day, Novem­ber 21st
West­pac Sta­di­um
Gates open at 4.30 pm.
Kick off is at 6pm.
Adults – $27
Child (15yrs and under)- $15
Fam­ily (2 adults and 2 chil­dren) – $64
Con­ces­sion (Seni­or Cit­izens 60+) -$15
Stu­dents with val­id ID – $15

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