The Junior All Whites kicked the year’s activities off with two matches against Fiji, winning both with relative ease 5-0 and 4-1.
Their third encounter saw them coming up against Papua New Guinea and New Zealand coach Darren Bazeley says not knowing a lot about his opponents ahead of this encounter wasn’t too much of concern.
“We approached the game the same as we do most games. We prepared yesterday and did what we wanted to do and once we got ahead very early on it became a game where we were in total command,” Bazeley says.
“We created a lot of chances, scored a lot of goals and played some really good football but at times it was a little bit false for us.”
It was a relative walk in the park for the Kiwis as they took a three goal lead barely ten minutes into the match. Tomislav Trbuhovic got proceedings underway when he tapped in a great pass from Andrew Blake. A minute later Andre de Jong got in on the early action hitting in two in quick succession as a clear lapse in concentration in the Papua New Guinea defence was capitalised on by the Kiwis.
The visitors had a chance of their own, but sent their effort over the target before Trbuhovic put his second in the back of the net only to be ruled offside. The disappointment didn’t last long as some great work down the left by Deklan Wynne allowed him to tap in his second.
The New Zealanders held the majority of possession, though Papalau Awele made a couple of breaking runs but his efforts were either sent off target or proved easy takes for New Zealand keeper Adam McDonald. After a couple of tentative efforts for New Zealand it was Trbuhovic who finally found the net once again as he turned inside his defender and blasted into the top corner for his hat-trick.
The score remained 5-0 going into the break with both sides taking advantage of the pause to make a couple of changes when they returned to the field.
The move paid off for the home side as substitute Elijah Neblett found himself on the scoreboard just three minutes after the restart. Andre de Jong added his second of the evening shooting low behind the keeper in the 56th minute, before Neblett had his brace in almost identical fashion.
Another substitute Joel Stevens was on the board in the 77th minute when he slotted into an empty net following an error from Papua New Guinea keeper Gibson Jimmy. Alex Rufer took New Zealand to double digits two minutes later with a great strike. Brock Messenger made it 11-0 in the 81st minute before Monty Patterson got on the end of a pull back from Stevens to round out the Junior All Whites tally at 12.
A sole consolation goal for the visitors came in the additional time as Nicky Benjamin made his way past the defence to go one-on-one with replacement keeper Cameron Hogg. With all eyes keenly on him Benjamin did
well to send his shot around an approaching Hogg to put his side on the score board.
After seeing such promise in his squad during their trainings and warm-up matches at home in Papua New Guinea it was a disappointing afternoon for coach Wynton Rufer.
“It’s always good to play against a quality opposition and I’d seen against Fiji that New Zealand were a different level, a different class. I had bigger hopes after seeing Fiji and then what we’ve been able to do the last couple of months with these players, but today was very disappointing,” Rufer says.
With Papua New Guinea, like Fiji, preparing for the OFC U-20 Championship in the hopes that they might join New Zealand at next year’s FIFA U-20 World Cup, Rufer says it is a good learning experience for the side.
“At the end of the day clearly it shows the players have a long way to go. Fiji loses 5-0 and 4-1, 12-1 and Fiji will probably be thinking ‘well, PNG are no good’, so in that regard it’s probably positive. Fortunately we’ve got the players for two weeks, every day and as well we’re not going to be playing a team of New Zealand’s quality at the tournament.
“Clearly you can see we’ve got a lot of work to do and it’s going to be really difficult.”
For New Zealand it was a chance to continue ironing out their strategy and work on different aspects of their game ahead of next year’s FIFA U-20 World Cup.
“One of the things that came out from Tuesday night’s game against Fiji was our crossing and crossing areas, runs to get there and the quality of the cross – so to score three or four goals from what we discussed just before the game was really pleasing.
“It shows that they’re a good group of lads that take things on board, learn from things and go on and implement them at the next opportunity they get so that was quite pleasing.
“Today, once we got to five or six, it was about maintaining high standards and I think we did that – until the last minute.”
Papua New Guinea and Fiji will both compete at the OFC U-20 Champions League in Suva, Fiji from 23-31 May. The winner of that competition, which also features New Caledonia, American Samoa, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu, will qualify for the FIFA U-20 World Cup 2015 as the second Oceania side. New Zealand qualify automatically as hosts of the FIFA tournament.

Share