OFC Technical Director, Jim Selby, and OFC Head of Women’s football, Connie Selby, have been encouraged by work done at the ground breaking OFC Technical Director Workshop at the OFC Academy in Auckland, New Zealand this week.
It was the first time Technical Directors from the Oceania Football Confederation had gathered together to discuss issues of development in the region and plan future strategies to overcome common problems.
OFC Technical Director, Jim Selby, was adamant the workshop would add value to improving technical standards throughout the region.
“The purpose of the workshop has been to share information, encourage discussion and facilitate programmes in each Member Association within the region; basically, how we can do things better in Oceania,” Selby said.
Selby said it was vital Oceania Football Confederation considered each Member Association’s unique environment and tailored technical development programmes specifically to each country.
“What may work in one country may not work in another. We have to make the programmes we implement in some way interconnected and where we can create generic programmes where applicable. What we do has to be deliverable.”
The workshop acted as a fact-finding mission with Technical Directors telling their peers what was happening in their respective nations in technical development and what issues and challenges existed.
There was much common ground.
American Samoa’s David Brand and Cook Island’s Tim Jerks said that one of the key challenges both nations faced was increasing the numbers of elite players to choose from which at present stood at a few dozen.
“In American Samoa there are big numbers of immigrants playing football; Koreans, South Americans, and they represent approximately 70% of the player base we have to choose from. The remaining 30% are American Samoan and so producing a competitive international team is obviously a struggle. American sports such as gridiron and baseball are also very popular and we get little or no football on television,” Brand said.
American Samoa had also not played a competitive international since the last FIFA World Cup qualifying campaign, though Brand hoped that would change with the possibility of a match against near neighbours Samoa.
Tim Jerks reiterated many of those sentiments, “We have a selection choice of maybe 30-40 players to make up an international team and whilst there is talent there we only have a small base to choose from. Rugby Union has been the number one sport and affects the numbers of registered players and there isn’t much televised football,” Jerks said.
Like American Samoa who have looked to mainland USA for players, the Cook Islands have looked to source players from New Zealand and Australia who possess Cook Islands ancestry or the relevant passports.
Women’s football faced similar challenges. Papua New Guinea have circumvented many of the issues by stating that for a men’s club to compete in any league competition, it is compulsory to field a women’s team, or be deemed ineligible to play.