Since moving to NZ a couple of years ago, I have been following the fortunes of Wellington Phoenix who play their football in the Australian A League. Crowds have been a modest but steady 8-10,000, but in the club’s supporters’ group the Yellow Fever, they have some of the noisiest and most passionate fans in the league, creating an atmosphere that often makes it feel like double that.

One important contributing factor has been the deliberate decision to minimise the daft celebration music that features in other sports here and let the fans rather than music orchestrate the atmosphere. The high number of expats, people with British heritage, or Kiwis who have taken in some Premier League action and adopted a team when travelling on their ‘Overseas Experience’ means that the chants take on a fairly familiar ring to those you would hear at games in the UK. And with every game against an Australian team there’s plenty of opportunity to give it to their Antipodean neighbours; ‘Same old Aussies, always cheating’, and ‘Dingos ate my baby, la la la la, ooh!’ being two of the more popular refrains. Throw in a few continental style touches (shirts off if the Phoenix are winning at 80 minutes - blokes I hasten to add) and the experience is never less than entertaining. It also helps greatly that fans can drink alcohol in full view of the game, so you can settle in with a pack of 4 beers at a time if you wish.  

This season has shot the team into the spotlight as they finished fourth in the league and qualified for the finals, a (fairly convoluted) series of extra games on top of the regular season for the top 6 finishing teams. After securing their place in the finals in front of 14,372 fans with a great 3-1 victory against Central Coast Mariners (no relation to Paul), interest has gone sky-high. 24,278 turned up, a domestic record attendance, as they beat Perth Glory in a gutsy, nail-biting penalty shoot out 4-2 after extra time finished 1-1 with Phoenix a man down. I did feel for the half dozen travelling Perth fans, having made the world’s second longest trip in domestic football.

In the couple of days since going on sale, 20,000+ tickets have now been sold for the next round of the finals, also at home, against Newcastle Jets, it’s looking like a full-house will be there shouting the team on, for many I suspect, their first ever football game. I will be doubly happy if Phoenix win that one against their Barcode namesakes! Should the Phoenix progress to the preliminary finals, then a game in Australia against Melbourne Victory or Sydney FC beckons. Should Phoenix win that, then it’s the Grand finals (complicated I know and a different set up to the Championship play-offs for example, but it offers the first and second placed teams an extra bite at the finals. See the link below for an explanation of how it all works). Not bad for a team built from scratch barely three years ago. 

We are currently in very exciting times in NZ, with the national team, the All Whites qualifying last November for the World Cup. South Africa will be only their second World Cup appearance, the last being in 1982. They beat Bahrain 1-0 in front of 35,134 people at Phoenix’s ground, the Westpac stadium (aka the Cake Tin), a record attendance for a New Zealand football game. For a rugby-mad nation getting football on the back and front pages of the papers takes some doing but the press are certainly behind the adventure. Kiwis are generally sports-mad though in my experience and with rugby (bar the All Blacks games) perhaps suffering similar over-exposure and apathy as the English Premier League, football is really taking off as something exciting and offering real crowd involvement.

The World Cup is going to be a bit of a test, but if they can better their results from Spain ’82, by drawing or winning a game, that is going to do a lot to raise the profile of the sport. They were apparently the team that everyone wanted in their group, being the lowest ranked and therefore the most likely source of points. This should suit the All Whites fine, with the possibility of an upset somewhere along the way. But probably not against Italy.

There is something of a Steve McClaren comparison with manager Ricki Herbert (and not just the ruddy-faced complexion). He manages Wellington Phoenix as well as the national team.  But it is certainly working to the advantage of both teams, with the Phoenix providing a locally based nucleus of national team players. Others are drawn from the US and Europe, with Blackburn’s Ryan Nelsen and our very own Chris Killen being two of the better known ones. Another Boro connection is Phoenix’s left back Tony Lochhead, who had a brief trial with Boro under Gareth Southgate that came to nothing.

Unlike the interest generated after Spain ’82 which wasn’t capitalised on, NZ football appears in a healthier state, albeit with the fully professional team playing in the Australian league as an unwelcome foreign team in the eyes of the Asian Football Confederation, which Football Federation Australia belong to. At the time of writing Phoenix’s 10 year extension of membership in the A League has been granted, pending approval by Fifa and AFC.

At ‘grassroots’ level it is probably the most popular participant sport in the country. There is a greater concentration in the cities, particularly Wellington, with ‘Little Dribbler’ leagues from 4 years up, right up to Sunday and indoor leagues and the domestic New Zealand Football Championship. Let’s hope the money generated from the World Cup will be properly invested in the game here; there’s room for rugby and football in New Zealand. Whatever happens, I’ve enjoyed the excitement and novelty of supporting a second team hope some of the good times come back to Boro!

Libardi

www.wellingtonphoenix.co.nz The official Phoenix home page

www.yellowfever.co.nz Wellington Phoenix fans’ site and forum

http://tinyurl.com/A-League-Rules A League and finals explained!

www.nzfootball.co.nz New Zealand football

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Last weekend saw round 2 of the finals and Phoenix went through 3-1 in extra time. It was a cracking spectacle for a full house, with many football newbies in attendance (which I think explains why a spontaneous Mexican wave started near the end of extra time - must be rugby fans). Still can't complain, an awesome crowd and ethusiasm which overshadowed the other finals game of rivals Sydney FC vs Melbourne Victory.

Phoenix now meet Sydney, in Oz on Saturday and the winners of that will meet Melbourne the following week in the Grand Final (I said it was complicated!) A quick look online at remaining flights and prices from Wellington to Sydney indicate that there will be a fair few Phoenix fans over there representing the club and seeing how far the adventure goes. Seems a certainty that they will have picked up a couple of thousand more regular fans for August when the new season kicks off.

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