Soccer: All Whites avoid Honiara horror

Ryan Nelsen led the All Whites to Nations Cup victory in 2008. Photo / Getty Images

The All Whites are set to face a different path to the 2018 World Cup, with the Nations Cup tournament format unlikely to be retained for the next four-year cycle.

The Oceania Football Confederation executive are close to agreeing the qualification formats for both the 2017 Confederations Cup and the Road to Russia and there is little support for another tournament, like the Nations Cup in Honiara in 2012.

Instead, the champions of Oceania are set to be found via a series of round-robin, home-and-away matches.

It would be good news for New Zealand Football.

No one wants a repeat of the Horror in Honiara, where the All Whites' poor display (they lost 2-0 to New Caledonia in the semifinals) made World Cup qualification much more difficult.

They still progressed to the final-four phase of home-and-away games but it meant they missed out on the 2013 Confederations Cup, which offered significant financial rewards and, more importantly, matches against top-class opposition (Uruguay, Nigeria and Spain) and the chance to spend almost two weeks in camp.

Instead, the All Whites had a poor build-up against a mixed level of opposition which was nowhere near adequate to face the likes of Mexico.

Granted, a lot of the Honiara harm was self inflicted. Ricki Herbert and his coaching staff neglected to do enough scouting or analysis of their opponents, selection and tactics were poor and the preceding tour of the US to play Honduras and El Salvador made acclimatisation in the Solomon Islands nearly impossible.

But the tournament format, with games every second day, and the pitch conditions and climate were always going to be difficult. If there was another similar event, in either Fiji or Papua New Guinea as had been mooted, the potential for another banana skin was high.

The proposed format could see the top eight teams divided into two groups of four, with the top two from each — decided after a series of home-and-away matches — progressing to the final four.

The Oceania champions would then be decided from a second stage of round-robin games and it's possible they will earn a ticket to both the 2017 Confederations Cup and 2018 World Cup.

It will present a scheduling challenge but will be alleviated by the fact most Fifa windows are longer in the next cycle, allowing for two games within one window.