The Football Ferns battled a former coach accused of bullying, injuries, and a record of no previous wins before beating Norway 1-0 in the opening game. This story was written before that match.
The Football Ferns have a hard act to follow when they take centre stage.
The Black Ferns’ triumphant campaign at last year’s Rugby World Cup was not only the sporting highlight of the year, but also a breakthrough moment for women’s sport in this country. The heartfelt and unqualified nationwide support for the team, in stark contrast to the lukewarm response to the All Blacks in recent years, disproved the long-standing rationale for according to women’s sport second-class status: that it doesn’t engage the public sufficiently to warrant the resources and media attention lavished on men’s sport.
Is it unrealistic to expect the Football Ferns to do something similar, to generate a feel-good wave of support and enthusiasm and ride it deep into the tournament? We should never discount the glorious uncertainty of sport or the impetus that can develop when a team really connect with their fans. But the unsentimental, hard-headed answer is “probably”, if not “of course”.
Rugby is our game and our women have long been the international benchmark, to the extent of winning six of the last seven World Cups. The Football Ferns have been to five World Cups without registering a single win.
The spoilsports at Stuff created a database of international matches going back to the 1960s using a modified version of a system devised by a physics professor to rate chess players. Stuff then ran 10,000 simulations of the upcoming tournament. The conclusion? The Football Ferns have a zero-in-10,000 chance of winning the World Cup. If this seems more defeatist than hard-headed, bear in mind too that the Football Ferns aren’t exactly on a tear. After their final pre-tournament game – beating Vietnam 2-0 in Napier – their 2023 record was one win, six losses and a draw, with three goals for, 21 against.
A mitigating factor has been the long-term injury absences of vastly experienced midfielders Annalie Longo and Ria Percival – they have 284 international caps between them – and redoubtable defender Rebekah Stott who has had to fight her way back from cancer treatment and ankle surgery.
Coach Jitka Klimková can’t be accused of sitting on her hands. (A former Czech Republic international who has coached US age-group teams, Klimková is the first woman to coach the Football Ferns on a full-time basis.) The players were put through a nine-week camp involving Monday-to-Friday training sessions, regular games against local boys’ teams and an intense focus on their three Pool A opponents.
There are other straws to cling to. Football’s set-up can be a great leveller: the hot favourites can dominate territory and possession and create a multitude of chances, yet fail to make it count on the scoreboard because of poor finishing, inspired goalkeeping, line-ball offside decisions or a combination thereof. Frustration and fatigue from all that unrewarded exertion set in; the embattled underdogs, who can’t quite believe they’re still in the game, get one counter-attack opportunity and nail it. Final score: Stars 0, Battlers 1.
And tournaments are stand-alone events with their own dynamic. History and form coming in don’t count for much; it’s all about momentum and getting it right on the night. Many pundits tipped Belgium’s “golden generation” to shine at last year’s men’s tournament: they didn’t make it past pool play while rank outsiders Morocco stormed to the semi-finals.
The pressure of expectation can inhibit and sometimes debilitate; witness hosts and five-time men’s world champions Brazil’s 1-7 semi-final humiliation by Germany in 2014. It has been said the All Blacks are to rugby what Brazilian men’s teams are to soccer; that result was like the All Blacks losing to the Wallabies at Eden Park by 70 points.
If the Football Ferns require a galvanising theme, they need look no further than that provided by former coach Austrian Andreas Heraf. After a 1-3 loss to Japan in Wellington in 2018, Heraf told the media, “We will never have the quality to compete with Japan … the gap is that big.”
The comment seemed to be a tipping point: 13 Football Ferns went public with allegations of bullying and intimidation and Heraf was suspended pending an investigation. Maybe sensibly, he didn’t hang around to find out whether the investigators believed him or the 13 players. He later complained of being compared to his compatriot Adolf Hitler, an unsubstantiated claim perhaps indicative of a persecution complex.
The Football Ferns could achieve great things in the next few weeks: win their first World Cup game, advance to the Round of 16 and shove Heraf’s words down his throat. That would be some sequel to a hard act to follow.
