KEY POINTS:
In the 13 months Shane McLeod has been in the job as national men's coach, he has endured his share of crunch games.
None were anywhere near as crucial as those he and his New Zealand team face from the time they run on to North Harbour's Crown Relocations Stadium tomorrow for their first game at the Olympic qualifying tournament.
This is the real deal. The last hope for the Black Sticks men to join the New Zealand women in Beijing. The Olympic spoils go to the winner of the final on Sunday week. For the rest, nothing.
For McLeod it is, like many of his players, the chance for a first Olympic experience. He never reached those heights as a player. His chances as a coach remain at least a 50-50 shot.
"It is a real motivating factor for sure," said McLeod. "Some of the players were in the team who qualified at a similar tournament in Madrid and went to the 2004 Athens Olympics. For others, it is something they really want to experience."
McLeod can take confidence from their efforts in the past year.
His Black Sticks have won 15 of their 29 games with seven drawn. In that time they have scored 117 goals - at better than four a game - and conceded 55.
"That's not too shabby," said McLeod. "Obviously, there have been some good results in that period but we would trade all of those for the chance to play at the Olympics."
Interestingly, there has been a fair proportion of goals scored from open play. In the past, drag flick expert Hayden Shaw has been the team's most regular scorer but these days the strikers have chimed in with some good numbers.
"We have not won as many penalty corners as we would have liked," McLeod admitted. "Hayden is still up there with the best drag flickers in the world but we no longer have to depend on him scoring for us. He got 11 at the Champions Challenge which was great but in games since then we have scored well from the field."
McLeod expects the more liberal view being taken by umpires to continue in this tournament.
"We haven't forced a lot of penalty corners - for a couple of reasons. The defending has got better and umpires are not now as quick in blowing for infringements in the circle. That probably hurts us more than most teams given that in Hayden Shaw we have one of the best in the business at penalty corners."
Stability has been a big factor in the New Zealand team's success.
With an average of a little more than 100 caps per player, New Zealand are the most experienced of the six teams chasing that ticket to Beijing.
The only newcomers to force their way into the 16-man squad are Canterbury defender Andy Hayward, 22, and North Harbour midfielder Steve Edwards, also 22. Between them, they have already claimed 36 caps.
With 201 caps, striker Bevan Hari is the most experienced of the New Zealanders but he comes up short compared with Argentine captain Mario Almada, 32, who has played 223 times for his country.
Argentina were expected to book their usual short route to the big stage but were surprisingly beaten by Canada on strokes in the final of last July's Pan American Games and are now in danger of missing a sixth straight Olympic appearance.
They go into the qualifying tournament as the highest-ranked team and are expected to reach the final.
McLeod is not so sure given what he has seen from the Irish and French who he rates as decent chances.
With the top two teams after round-robin play to progress to the final, there will be some crucial games before then, including the tournament opener between France and Ireland, Sunday's battle between New Zealand and Ireland, France against Argentina on Tuesday and the New Zealand-Argentina clash on Wednesday.
