Rory Fallon hopes the goal which gave New Zealand a 1-0 win over Bahrain on Saturday and a World Cup berth for the first time in 27 years will allow soccer in his country to “emerge from rugby’s dark cloud.”
The goal was Fallon’s second in three internationals for New Zealand after he switched his allegiance from England, for whom he played at youth level. Fallon said part of his motivation for switching was to help soccer in New Zealand challenge rugby’s overwhelming popularity.
The crowd of 35,000 that saw New Zealand win was the largest ever for a soccer match in the country and that attention, and the promise of more in South Africa, could lift soccer’s profile.
Rugby is already shedding its live and television audience share as fans rebel against long seasons, and soccer authorities believes the global game is ready to become more deeply embedded in New Zealand’s culture.
Soccer failed to take advantage of its surge in popularity in 1982 but Fallon hopes that it is now ready to challenge rugby’s supremacy in New Zealand sport.
“We aren’t trying to take over the rugby. Football is football and rugby is rugby,” the 27-year-old Fallon said. “We just want a decent chance to be in the headlines.”
“It’s been a dark cloud over New Zealand football for many years, that’s why I tried to escape New Zealand because it was just too full of rugby,” he said.
“I love rugby, don’t get me wrong. I love rugby but sometimes they need to share the limelight and hopefully tonight we can get some of it,” Fallon said.
New Zealand soccer has already been boosted by the estimated US$10 million windfall which came with Saturday’s victory, 40 percent of which will be shared by players who took part in the qualifying campaign.
Coach Ricki Herbert briefly set aside the euphoria of Saturday’s win to warn soccer to use the cash and its new profile wisely.
“We’d better spend the bloody money right because we’re not going down that pathway [of 1982], surely,” he said. “We have waited 27 years to resurrect something and it’s incredibly important to all of us and incredibly important to players, the public, to the kids.”
“I’m not sure what [money] they are going to get but there needs to be deliberation about where it goes,” he said.
New Zealand was briefly soccer mad on the weekend. News bulletins were full of the victory over Bahrain and only briefly mentioned New Zealand’s 20-6 rugby win over Italy in Milan.
New Zealand Prime Minister John Key expressed his pride in the performance of the team known locally as the All Whites.
“This is the chance we have been waiting more than 20 years for. It is a credit to Ryan Nelsen and his team that tonight they have rekindled New Zealand’s passion for the beautiful game,” Key said.
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