Soccer: Campaign funded by players

Tim Brown came up with the campaign slogan. Photo / Getty Images

The All Whites players came up with the idea and spent close to $100,000 of their own money for the One Shot For Glory marketing campaign used by New Zealand Football for the World Cup playoffs against Bahrain.

NZF played on the high stakes of the home and away playoff with Bahrain but it was an idea that came from the players, who are believed to have had little confidence in the national body to market the game properly.

They offered their own money to fund the campaign in the hope of playing in front of a sell-out crowd for the second leg in Wellington.

The New Zealand Professional Footballers' Association board, made up of current All Whites Ryan Nelsen, Simon Elliott, Ivan Vicelich and Tim Brown, along with former internationals Harry Ngata, Chris Jackson and Noah Hickey and lawyer Andrew Scott-Howman, came up with the idea once they had won the Oceania qualifiers last year.

All Whites vice-captain Brown came up with the One Shot For Glory slogan and presented the concept with the PFA to marketing agency Clemenger in Wellington.

"We were just concerned this game was going to be the biggest game in our lives and this amazing thing and people weren't going to know about it," he said.

"We wanted to let people know what it could be and our main priority was filling the stadium, wherever the game was going to be played.

"All the cards fell on our table. A massive part of filling the Cake Tin was that first-up [0-0] result in Bahrain. But the players were very much a part of generating the spirit of the match. How big a part it played on that night, I'm not sure, but it played a part and the players can be pretty proud of that."

The players receive money from the PFA through membership with world players' association Fifpro.

They receive an annual payout from endorsements from things such as PlayStation and, while they could have lined their own pockets, part of their mandate is to put some money back into the game.

"The players could have claimed that money but decided we could do a hell of a lot of good with it," Brown said.

NZF chief executive Michael Glading said they welcomed the offer from the players and that they paid them a dividend greater than their original investment from profits from the game.