Soccer: When shorts really were short

The team in 1981. Photo / Gerald Shacklock

The whole country got in behind the All Whites as their long campaign to make the 1982 World Cup finals built towards a couple of cut-throat games in unusual football locations.

This Sunday's All Whites' match in Bahrain, where they will hope to stake a claim for a place in the 2010 World Cup finals, has revived memories of that golden time nearly 30 years ago.

Soccer, as we called it in New Zealand then, had never enjoyed such an exalted place in the national consciousness, and hasn't since.

Looking back, it says something for those remarkable couple of years in New Zealand sport that the memories flood back so easily.

Yes, the whole country really was behind the team, almost. I watched the crucial 1981 game against Saudi Arabia - played in Riyadh a week before Christmas - with a group of friends in Whangarei, which included my wife-to-be.

This was one of the most incredible occasions in New Zealand sport, the 14th qualifying game of the campaign, with the All Whites facing the virtually impossible task of winning by five goals to keep their dream alive, or six goals to book a place in the finals in Spain.

At halftime, the All Whites were leading 5-0, and most of us were euphoric.

"Which team are we?" inquired the woman I was to spend my life with.

(Sport just isn't her thing - she has no recollection of attending the first Rugby World Cup final, either).

The game in Riyadh was an aberration. Having achieved the virtually impossible by scoring five goals in the first half, the All Whites inexplicably failed to score in the second.

This sent them to a playoff against China - a team they had drawn with and beaten in previous qualifiers - at the neutral venue of Singapore.

That game in early 1982 provided the single moment which stands out the most all these years later - young Wynton Rufer's brilliantly struck long-range goal which gave New Zealand a 2-0 lead early in the second half, a lead they only just clung to against sustained Chinese pressure.

The quality of the goal endures - strikes like that were not as common in those days before footballs became a sort of space race project, and were rarer still from a New Zealand player.

The brilliance of the goal and its significance make it a landmark in New Zealand sports history.

What are the other memories? Grant Turner's headed goal from an extraordinary distance against Australia in Sydney is high on the list. Turner has been quoted as saying he has no idea how he scored such a stunning headed goal.

Then there was the infamous match at Mt Smart Stadium, a boiling hot day as I remember it, when Kuwait scored a shock victory and a mad-headed schoolboy ran out of the jam-packed crowd to throw a can at the Indonesian referee who had awarded two penalties to the visitors. Emotions were high.

We had travelled down from Whangarei for the match, and have the photos to prove it. These were the days of porn star haircuts and shorts that fully justified the word. Unfortunately this applied not only to members of the All Whites, as many old photos prove.

Surprisingly, memories from the All Whites' games in the finals in Spain are not as clear as they might be.

The team performed creditably against Russia in particular and also against a perhaps benevolent Brazil, while two goals from Steve Wooddin and Sumner against Scotland not only confirmed that this team could perform miracles, but also helped to put the Scots out of the tournament.

It's interesting what either sticks or has been formulated in the memory cells, and they include excellent stops from goalkeeper Frank van Hattum, and the goals against Scotland. For some reason I remember the work of Kenny Cresswell - who had come into the side only for the finals - ahead of players such as Wynton Rufer, our greatest footballer and saviour at the end of the qualifying run.

Cresswell's selection was probably evidence of the hard-nosed intelligence that drove this campaign under the leadership of John Adshead and Kevin Fallon. They did what they thought was right for every occasion rather than reward players for past deeds, and even the games in Spain were not treated as payoffs for previous excellent work.

This attitude was most famously evident in the decision to drop goalkeeper Richard Wilson, who played in all the qualifiers, for the agile shot stopper van Hattum. Wilson's form, apparently, had dropped off in training.

Nearly 30 years on, people remember this controversial decision as much as anything involving the games in Spain. From a public point of view, there is enormous sympathy for Wilson, prompted by a belief he should have got at least one game in the finals.

Within the inner sanctum, though, not so. Sport at this level, even for a team on a fairytale ride, has no room for such indulgences.

Another memory: the heartbreak that Grant Turner must have gone through when injury ruled him out of playing in the World Cup finals. A rugged character, he was integral to the qualifying run, one of the poster boys of this team, and a definite fan favourite.

As for anecdotes, one from van Hattum (revealed in my case through reading a history of New Zealand soccer written by Tony Hilton of Wellington) has always stood out because it showed what it meant to our players to compete on these fields of dreams.

Van Hattum says the All Whites reckoned that Adrian Elrick man-marked the Brazilian superstar Zico for the final five minutes of the game in Seville to ensure he could swap shirts with him. Van Hattum didn't have to work so hard for Zico memorabilia - the great man took a fancy to the goalie's shorts and initiated a swap.

What stands out most all these years later, though, is the identities the All Whites players forged. We all got to know their playing characteristics and appearances, from Steve Wooddin's scoring foot and Billy McClure's dead ball ability, through to Bobby Almond's beard, Sumner's moustache, Duncan Cole's beaded necklace and Keith Mackay's nickname, "Buzzer".

Even the boss, football's administrative supremo Charlie Dempsey, was famous.

Almond and Sumner were the engine of the team - we all knew that because these footballers were household names in this rugby land.

A nation steeped in analysing rugby had become instant experts in soccer skills, tactics and formations - that's how the memory plays it back, rightly or wrongly. The images are so clear and the memories so wonderful - apart from the short shorts, of course.