Sometimes I just don’t understand the world. I am drafting this sitting on a Jetstar flight bound for Queenstown after two weeks in Auckland coaching at the Oceania Football Confederation (OFC) Under 17’s Championship, which doubled as the region’s World Cup Qualifiers for this year’s FIFA Under 17 World Cup. Sitting in the row in front of me is one of the most gorgeous girls I have ever seen. Sitting next to her is her boyfriend - a white, European version of Erkel. As I said, sometimes I just don’t understand the world.
What I do understand is that Tongan football needs a lot of work. You may gather from the title that we got thrashed in all four of our games at the tournament and that on the surface it would be impossible to describe the Tongan performance at the tournament a success, but I think it was. While we lost 8-0 to Tahiti, 15-0 to the Solomon Islands, 17-0 to New Caledonia and 6-2 to the Cook Islands (and I have never lost like that before ever in my life!) our performances at the tournament have opened the eyes of the people that count at the OFC and within the Tongan Football Association (TFA) that the current way of doing things cannot continue.
Let me put our results into perspective. For each game I was forced to field a minimum of three to six players that were aged 13-15. Each team we played against fielded sides with 16 year olds, as expected at an U17 tournament. My boys had never played in fast, tough, competitive matches of this kind and had five weeks of proper football training under their belts. All of our opposition, including the Cook Islands, were trained in national academies since the age of ten and had played in competitive matches their whole lives. We didn’t stand a chance. All the players we came up against were not only vastly technically superior (i.e. they knew how to control, pass, play accurate long passes, defend in one on one situations etc) but they clearly understood the game. The opposition were always one (or five) steps ahead of us. My boys would react to situations rather than anticipate situations. It would take a long ball to be played over our defence for them to turn and chase rather than anticipating the long ball (through reading the game) and defending appropriately as a unit to counter the threat. No matter how much you train, you cannot substitute the value of matches in developing a player’s understanding of the game.
Vs. Cook Islands
As a side note, I was also surprised at the level of quality (ourselves excepted) at the tournament. I thought (rather naively) going into this tournament that the level of the NSW Premier League (where I used to coach with Manly United) would be superior. But if the Manly United Under 17 side turned up at this tournament they would be pummeled and embarrassed in each game, not to the extent Tonga was however!
One of 15 goals against the Solomons
Now while all this sounds largely negative, it isn’t. For me the highlight was our second half performance against the Cook Islands. After having one of our best players sent off, we played for 40 minutes with ten men and managed to win the second half 2-1. This showed me (and members of the TFA’s Executive Committee who were in attendance) that we do have some talent to work with in the future. Another positive has been the networking opportunities that have presented themselves throughout the course of the tournament. I was lucky enough to have a meeting with the head of Technical Development for the OFC, I attended training sessions and chatted with the coaches of Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, American Samoa and Vanuatu and now have many ideas that I can take back to Tonga for the future. A number of these conversations have also led to possible job opportunities in the future, if I am so inclined.
The results and the performances of the boys, coupled with the networking opportunities I have had, will also lend further weight to my arguments that Tonga needs a fully functioning national academy in order to develop talent for the future. My job is now to go away and pen a report on the preparation and performance of the team and provide recommendations on how Tonga can move forward.
Our GK was the centre of attention in every match!
I have been told to be brutally honest in my summation by the TFA’s new Secretary General and am optimistic that a number of my recommendations will be taken on board. If they are, my job in Tonga will now be to establish a fully functioning youth academy over the next six months. That is, establish a means of selecting talent, devise a curriculum and talent pathway to ensure all players (boys and girls) train and play year round and develop a framework to develop and educate Tongan coaches to work at the academy and also in the wider community. I will do this while also assisting to prepare the national men’s and women’s team for the South Pacific Games in New Caledonia this August. If this is the case it will be a busy (relatively busy anyway – I am in Tonga after all) six months and a chance for me to leave a bit of a legacy for future Tongan coaches and Tongan players.
However, if for whatever reason the TFA decide against establishing a national academy (and I know budgetary issues are not a concern as I have had assurances from the OFC they will assist with money to establish the academy) then I will need to rethink my position in Tonga and whether it is worth hanging around while nothing changes for no good reason.
Note – New Zealand from the air is absolutely amazing. We are just flying over the South Island as I type this and there have been snow-capped volcanoes and mountains a tapestry of rivers intersecting each, golden beaches and awesome coast line the whole way. I am going to spend the next two and a bit weeks here on holiday driving from Queenstown back to Auckland via Mt. Cook, the west coast, Nelson and Wellington. I cannot wait and have a sneaky feeling I am going to fall in love with the South Island of New Zealand, either way it’s finally a chance to eat good food, drink good beers, catch up with a few people and perhaps convince the Euro in front of me to ditch Erkel!
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