Steven Holloway: Green squad a big gamble for new All Whites coach

New All Whites coach Anthony Hudson has hung his hat on team culture and enforcing change. Photo / AFP

It must be a hard time to be an experienced member of the All Whites.

As new coach Anthony Hudson implements his plan of improving depth, competition and culture with a friendly against Korea Republic this month, the old guard are stranded on the outside looking in.

Hudson said he's seen enough of Tommy Smith, Glen Moss, Andrew Durante, Shane Smeltz, Jeremy Brockie and Tim Payne for the moment, and wants to give some new boys a chance to stake their claim for a spot in the World Cup qualification run-in.

But with quality international fixtures so sparse and spread out for New Zealand, the omission of such senior names - and you can likely add in Winston Reid who came off in the eighth minute for West Ham last week with a hamstring injury - while trying to develop a winning culture with seven days on the training pitch in Seoul, is raising a few eyebrows.

Testing a number of new faces with an expansive squad early in an international coach's reign is not exactly rewriting the manual (Ricki Herbert showed us the way with names like Adrian Webster, Jeff Fleming, Campbell Banks and Greg Draper in his first years) but leaving so many of our best players at home at the same time certainly is.

However painting all New Zealand's senior pros with the same brush may not be accurate either. It's understood Tommy Smith made himself unavailable for the fixture in Seoul, and won't be back for the camp in June either during his holidays.

And Andrew Durante and Shane Smeltz may be concerned that they will never wear the Silver Fern again. Hudson seemed unimpressed with Durante's performance as the left sided centre back against Uzbekistan and Smeltz hasn't even been on the radar since Hudson took charge.

Hudson has hung his hat on team culture and enforcing change and there were a few reality clashes when he travelled with the team for the first time to Uzbekistan.

Hudson was unhappy with the All Whites' casual dress of T-shirt and jeans at the airport, but his observations were met with "well give us clothes to wear, we have to return our tracksuits after every tour".

Some senior pros also pushed the boat out a little too far with after match drinks following the Uzbekistan defeat, which caught Hudson's ire.

But as they do things more under Hudson's command, they will become used to his expectations.

It's also small fry compared to the questions surrounding the strategy of taking so many green and unproven international players into the arena of a very difficult international against South Korea, where we would struggle using our best and most experienced.

Hudson will point to the fact that he is planning for the long term and wants to confirm what he doesn't know as much as what he already does, and it's refreshing to have a coach with such a clear plan and belief in his system.

But it may be a tough watch from a fan perspective. Given we so rarely get to see our national team in action, it will be a blow to the embryonic fan culture here if we get a trouncing on the international stage because the coach is playing mad scientist.

However if one of the new Kiwi discoveries, defender Themistoklis Tzimopoulos or midfielder Benjamin van den Broek, turns out to be a future starter, at least part of the experiment will have been a big success.