Football in New Zealand is riding an incredible wave, especially after World Cup qualification. Michael Brown looks at how the national body intends taking advantage of this surge in interest.
Michael Glading tells the story with relish. One of his staff members took his five-year-old son for his first game of football and asked him afterwards if he had enjoyed it.
"Dad," he said, "I really enjoyed it. I found a small snail out there."
While it is an amusing
anecdote, and Glading is clearly tickled with it, it illustrates a problem - many kids are not having a meaningful experience with football from a young age and are being lost to the game.
New Zealand Football wants that to change and next year will radically alter the way football is played at junior level. At present, there is no standardised game. Children of five or six play games of four, five, six or even seven-a-side, depending on what club they are at.
Next year, a standardised programme will be rolled out which will see games of three vs three (4-6-year-olds), four vs four (7-8), seven vs seven (9-11) and nine vs nine (12-13), as well as coaching sessions on Saturday mornings.
It's all being done in an effort to ensure children are involved more and ultimately enjoy it more.
It's a model based on findings from director of football development and national women's coach John Herdman who has observed what is done in Germany, the Netherlands, England, Switzerland, Australia and Japan.
"What we have learned over the last 10 years is that if we want more quality cream, we have to have more quality milk at the bottom end," Herdman says. "But it's also how you look after the cow sheds."
Herdman likes to talk in analogies. He also talks about this programme being like a Happy Meal that is exciting to kids. His point is that if NZF can have a better development programme from the time Little Johnny starts kicking a ball, there's more chance of him becoming a Ryan Nelsen.
Some will argue NZF should use their money differently in the wake of football's incredible momentum in the past 12 months - like keeping the All Whites active post World Cup - but the national body have no intention of squandering the US$8 million Fifa handout that comes with World Cup qualification.
As one said, you don't go out and blow it on a Jaguar when you need the Ford to run for the next 10 years.
Once the players take their cut - about 40 per cent - and other costs are factored in, NZF should be left with about NZ$5 million. That sounds a lot, and many national organisations would love to get their hands on that sort of money, but NZF's annual revenue is $7 million.
That's why up to $2 million will be spent on their development programme, with the plans at junior level accounting for a large proportion of that. It also includes resources for coach and referee development, as well as talent identification.
Most of the rest will go into an endowment fund, which they hope will in time generate about $1 million in interest annually for them to spend.
It doesn't sound particularly sexy. But NZF don't want this golden chance to establish football as a truly credible sport in this country to pass them by. That's what happened after 1982 and it has taken 28 years to return to a World Cup.
"The focus is on us to make sure it's not just a blip," Glading says of the upsurge of interest, "that it's a momentum shift that has a strong degree of permanence.
"One of our goals is to create a legacy that lives on. Words are easy. Actions are much harder. It's all very exciting but if we try to do everything in five minutes, we will fail."
Football has a strong base to work with. Sparc figures show there are 227,000 people playing football in some form - competitive, business house, futsal, social etc - including 115,000 registered players.
Junior numbers are extremely strong, with 66,716 registered players in 2009, but participation drops off alarmingly from secondary school age. That's why NZF are so determined to improve the standard and meaningfulness of junior football.
They are also planning a Festival of Football, as they have named it, to coincide with June's World Cup that will see a number of young coaches go into schools to run clinics.
It's hoped as many as 100,000 children will be exposed to it and a further 5000 enroll to play football.
Already there is a massive surge in Wellington, home of the Phoenix and venue of last year's pulsating 1-0 win over Bahrain that secured a place in the World Cup.
Registrations in the capital have reportedly jumped about 20 per cent in the past five years and expectations are they will jump even higher this year (numbers will be collated in April). There are also more football teams playing in Wellington school competitions than in Auckland.
It has put a tremendous load on facilities, with Capital Football reporting that Wellington is about seven grounds short to cope with the swelled numbers.
Auckland Football have had a shortfall for some time and can't cope with additional numbers but chief executive David Parker said there is a 12 per cent increase in women's football, a six per cent rise in men's teams this year (305, up from 288 last year) and already a 3.4 per cent growth in youth football (10-17) with registrations still coming in.
With no new grounds available, an increase in artificial fields is paramount.
Junior football represents the first phase of NZF's 10-year plan. A second phase of roughly three years will see a focus on youth football followed by another three-year focus on senior football.
The reality is, though, the All Whites are this country's marketing arm, followed by the Phoenix.
The Phoenix's future is uncertain because they don't have a licence to play in the A-League beyond next season. And there is a danger the All Whites won't play for two years because, being the biggest fish in their confederation's pond, there are no competitions for them aside from the Oceania Nations Cup and it's too costly to bring a decent team here.
"We might get a one-off game," Glading says. "But a lot will depend on what our next [World Cup qualification] route is. If we got the same as this time, then you wouldn't spend three years building for that. It would be stupid to start in January 2011.
"There is a temptation to have them playing to keep them in the public eye but what we have learned in the past is that if we get the best players in to take on meaningless opposition, it doesn't do a lot.
"When we played New Caledonia and brought Ryan and the best players back, we pulled only 7500 [spectators to North Harbour Stadium]. I think it comes down to the quality of opposition than the quality of All Whites.
"We have pretty lofty goals," Glading continues. "We have to be careful to take it step by step. That's learning from the past.
"I think we are at a crossroads. If we do it right, we could really take football to a level it's never been before.
"Before I die, I would like to see an All Whites team ranked in the 30s in the world. It means we need to do things better. It's ambitious but if we don't have that goal, we deserve, as a national body, to be shot."