THINKPIECE - Embattled NZ Football leadership may be backing wrong horse

THINKPIECE By PETER THORLEY
THE debate over United Soccer One's decision to refuse any of their senior club teams from playing in the Northern League has taken the gloss off New Zealand Football's great weekend of achievements.
Stuart Jacobs' junior Kiwi team earned a place at the Olympics by virtue of an 8-0 drubbing of the Cook Islands and that added to the women team's success on Friday as they also earned an Oceania Olympic nomination.
While the Kiwi teams were the clear favourites in their respective competitions, football is often dominated by unlikely upsets so the victories should have been celebrated by NZF bosses.
Instead, they are busy figuring out how to pay for the team's preparations for Beijing should they gain the Olympic committee's sanction. The national organisation is in deep financial trouble after years of financial mismanagement and now they have to deal with US1, the federation that administers football in Northland.
US1 CEO Keith Johnston and his board are under fire from NZF chairman John Morris and his supporters for trying to stop all the region's clubs from entering the Northern Premier League this season, so they can play in the newly formed United Soccer One Premier League.
Morris is correct in trying to turn his back on the Northern League. The league is out of date. In the good old days, a club team could earn promotion from local leagues into the Northern League third division, climb up the ranks and then earn promotion into the national league.
Those days are gone now, with the NZFC, the current equivalent of the national league, is now harder to get into than Fort Knox. It is a closed competition without promotion or relegation, so there is little reason for the Northern League to exist.
The competition that until now has spanned three federations - US1 (Northland, North Harbour), Soccer2 (Auckland) and Federation 3 (Waikato-Bay of Plenty) - has contracted from three leagues last season into one. If Johnston gets his way and gets the three US1 clubs - Waitakere City, East Coast Bays and Glenfield (who still want to play in the Northern League) - to join the new US1 Premier league, then it will almost be as strong as last year's Northern Premier League.
Morris et al believe that many of the players will vote with their feet and join clubs over the bridge just so they can play in the Northern League, but that remains pure speculation, fanned by some one-eyed reporting in the media.
Sure, there will be a period when the competition standard may drop and there will be some one-sided games as clubs such as East Coast Bays play Hibiscus Coast but the dust will settle as it always does after competition reshuffles and the game will go on.
Federation 3 started their own premier league a few years ago and went through some hard times but the competition has bounced back and the contraction of the Northern League should further strengthen it.
The US1 premier division currently has 10 teams. It is made up of six of last year's Northern Premier clubs: Glenfield Rovers, Albany United, Waitakere City, East Coast Bays, North Shore United and Birkenhead United.
Northland composite side North Force are the sole entrant from last year's Northern division one and they are joined in the competition by former Northern division-two clubs, Takapuna and Hibiscus Coast, with a new west Auckland club, the Western Tornados joining the league.
Should NZ Football win the battle and force US1 to release the three dissenting clubs, the federation reportedly has three more teams lined up to fill in the gaps but the new league standard will certainly suffer as a result.
It will be another test for the embattled leadership at NZF and just maybe they have chosen the wrong horse.