Oceania path to 2006 World Cup decided

OFC/FRANKFURT: The 2006 FIFA World Cup preliminary draw for the Oceanian Zone has been confirmed in Frankfurt today with the announcement of the two groups for Stage One.

Group One (1): Tahiti, Solomon Islands, New Caledonia, Tonga and the Cook Group Two (2): there is Fiji, Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea, Samoa and American Samoa.

Under the system and format proposed by the Oceania Football Confederation and approved by FIFA, the two groups will each play a round robin tournament under a league system format sometime in March/April 2004 (Dates and venues to be confirmed).

The winner and runner up from each group will advance to Stage Two where they will face seeded teams Australia and New Zealand who both received byes for Stage One because of their higher FIFA ranking. The Stage Two process will involve a round robin tournament between the top six teams on a league system at a single venue, yet to be decided. Dates in May/June 2004 have been proposed with the exact dates to be confirmed soon.

Under the approved system of combining the OFC Nations Cup with the 2006 World Cup qualifying process, the winner and runner up from Stage Two will meet later in a home and away Nations Cup final in October 2004 with the winner earning the right to represent Oceania at the 2005 FIFA Confederations Cup Germany and 2005 AFC/OFC Challenge Cup.

The same two teams will then meet almost a year later in September 2005 in a home and away series to decide the Oceania Champion to contest the next and final stage of the 2006 World Cup preliminary qualifying process against the fifth placed team from the CONMEBOL (South America) qualifying rounds. FIFA confirmed this final playoff route in Frankfurt on 4 December 2003.

The OFC had initially proposed for the playoff route to be considered for geographic reasons based on fair-play and logic and failing that, for a random draw of the half-berths possessed by the four confederations affected. However, neither proposal was successful and the status quo of the OFC Champion taking the South American route has been retained.