Editorial: Goalie's gaffe shows there's hope for NZ

If ever the All Whites needed reminding that anything can happen at the World Cup in South Africa, a life-changing fumble by the England goalkeeper yesterday provided them hope.

Robert Green's butterfingers gifted the United States a draw and a tournament point and enhanced their prospects of advancement to the knockout stage.

The Americans are a higher-ranked, better-equipped outfit than New Zealand but the Green incident shows that once a team make it to the World Cup, they can upset predictions with grit, teamwork and undeserved luck.

The All Whites open their account tomorrow night against Slovakia, a more favoured team but still no heavyweights. It is the match that the New Zealanders are targeting most for at least one point, the first this country would have won at the Cup.

Being there is a remarkable achievement. Once on the field in South Africa, the All Whites have a chance, whether made by them or offered up by opponents under the twin curses of pressure or complacency.

The group also includes Italy and Paraguay, on paper teams the All Whites should have no hope of matching, let alone overcoming, in pool play.

Yet the reigning world champions, Italy, did not get into their stride in Germany in 2006 until the quarter-final against Ukraine, and should Paraguay have already qualified by the time they meet New Zealand, their focus could be elsewhere.

So tomorrow night the nation will tune into probably the key match for soccer in this country in nearly 30 years. Draw, or win, and New Zealand will have over-achieved already at South Africa 2010.

Lose, and the optimists will continue to hold out for a point somehow against Paraguay but the probabilities grow that this All Whites team come home with nothing more tangible than their 1982 predecessors, three games and three losses.

To put the Kiwi task in perspective, they are the equivalent of Georgia or Namibia or Russia coming to the Rugby World Cup here next year - minnows full of nationalistic pride and hoping for a boilover against one of the middling qualifiers in their groups.

While soccer offers more hope of one or two mistakes turning a match for an underdog, the country needs to view the All Whites' assignment through a realistic lens.

Some players have gone from club play at Kiwitea St in Sandringham to world sport's premier stage, against stars - selected from hundreds of thousands of players - whose weekly pay packets routinely exceed $250,000 a week.

The All Whites' best player and captain, Ryan Nelsen, encounters some of the global stars in the English Premier League but few others have regularly engaged at that level.

Their coach, Ricki Herbert, has been to the peak before as one of the 1982 team and his measured, never-say-never attitude is perhaps New Zealand's most auspicious attribute. He doesn't talk this team up but he doesn't talk them down, either, and is desperate to take them further than the side he played for.

Soccer observers predict the team's style may not be pretty, with a concentration on defence and hoofing the ball well forward in hope of a Robert Green-style moment of weakness.

Any lover of sport would be seduced by the glamour and drama of the World Cup. The added hope that raw underdogs - our underdogs - may somehow do better than they logically should makes this tournament more captivating again.

Stranger things have happened.

The Tall Blacks basketball team stunned that sport's world championships, finishing fourth. Michael Campbell won golf's US Open. And in Rustenburg, the town in which New Zealand will play Slovakia, the Hand of Clod helped the try-hards of the United States hold mighty England to a historic draw.