Today marks seven weeks until the National Football (soccer) Team of Tonga, of which I am head coach, is supposedly leaving for our 2014 FIFA World Cup Qualifying matches in New Caledonia at this year’s South Pacific Games (SPG). At present the plan is to spend 10-14 days in Fiji prior to the tournament kicking off in New Caledonia on August 24th and play a number of regional Fijian teams and other international sides who will be using Fiji as a training base before playing in New Caledonia.
Before training - still no training gear!
The team has been preparing for 13 weeks now and after coming through a fairly intense period of developing the side’s fitness we are now down to a final squad of 26 which will be trimmed to 20 for the qualifying tournament. I am incredibly happy with how the boys have transformed themselves into a team over the past three and a bit months and how the coaching staff (of which I have a Fijian assistant, an American strength and conditioning coach, three local assistants who we are grooming to take over national sides in the future and my Tongan Technical Director) have developed the boys’ technical and tactical ability over that time. Over 13 weeks we have gone from playing kick and rush football with no particular aim to keeping the ball on the deck and trying to play effective football. Needless to say I am incredibly proud of the way the boys have developed and they are a pleasure to coach. There are no egos in the squad, as you get at all levels in Australia, and the boys always give 100% in training and will try to comprehend what we ask of them and to put it into practice. I have even got the boys asking questions in training and requesting extra training, which for anyone who has worked in Tonga knows that Tongans asking for extra work of any sort is a rarity!
We recently had a FIFA official here in Tonga who was inspecting our facilities to ensure FIFA’s Goal Project money was spent properly; however the inspector had also been a national coach of New Zealand and has an intimate knowledge of Oceania football. On his final day here we played an ‘inter-club trial’ and the inspector said he was very impressed with the level of the boys’ play for a team from Tonga. A back-handed compliment if there ever was one, but a compliment none the less.
I say supposedly leaving, as while we have been preparing the squad for 13 weeks a spanner has recently been thrown into the works that mean our plans could change completely. As mentioned the first round of Oceania World Cup FIFA Qualifiers were to be part of the 2011 SPG in New Caledonia. However there are countries eligible to compete in the SPG that are not part of FIFA’s Oceania Football Confederation (OFC). One country, Guam (from FIFA’s Asian Football Confederation), had previously agreed not to compete in the football competition at the SPG as if they did play, FIFA would not recognise the SPG football tournament as World Cup Qualifiers for Oceania, as a team from Asia would be playing in the tournament. To put it into perspective it would be like Morocco or Brazil playing in the European World Cup Qualifying competition. Guam have now said they want to play in the football tournament - as is their legal entitlement with Guam being part of the South Pacific Games Council - however this now means the OFC will need to organise another tournament to act as the 2014 FIFA World Cup Qualifying competition for Oceania.
At the outset I saw this development as positive. With the SPG no longer being World Cup Qualifying, Tonga would have competitive warm-up matches in a serious tournament before World Cup Qualifying. However, I have since learnt the basic issue for football associations from countries in the region like Tonga is we cannot afford to participate in New Caledonia this September and then travel once more to another country in the region a few months later to play more games. With very little funding going into the game here in Tonga, apart from FIFA’s annual handout, it is an incredibly expensive project to send 20 players and four staff anywhere in the Pacific. From Tonga we can only fly directly to Fiji, New Zealand or Australia and once you add on connecting flights to a place like New Caledonia, then four weeks’ worth of accommodation, food, training and playing kits, medical and physiotherapy supplies the cost to send our team easily reaches six figures. Tonga simply cannot afford to spend up to one million Pa’anga (nearly 500,000 Australian Dollars) within three-six months to send one representative team to two competitions.
While nothing has been set in stone as yet, it appears 99% certain that Guam will exercise their legal right to play football at the SPG. So what does this mean for Tonga? From my perspective it is annoying. We have been preparing for 13 weeks on the basis that we would leave in seven weeks’ time and our preparation has been scheduled accordingly. Initial rumblings from OFC indicate a regional World Cup Qualifying tournament would now not be held until March, nine months away. This would basically mean the boys would have been training for 12 months without any competitive matches and would necessitate a change in schedule to ensure that while the boys stayed together as a group over the next five to six months, we would not train six days per week as is our current schedule. Ideally it would also mean we would play International Friendlies as a warm-up, however I can't be certain this would eventuate.
If this does happen and Tonga will not be playing until March, 2012 and it also leaves my position in the air. As those of you who read this blog know, I am here as a volunteer and have found myself in the right place and the right time to be elevated to the position of national coach. My contract here is to finish on September 19th (one week after I was scheduled to return from New Caledonia), so if I was to go home the Tonga Football Association (TFA) would need to then need to decide if they wanted me to stay on as their coach. Luckily for me, the TFA have indicated they want me as their National Coach and are willing to do what it takes to ensure I am in charge of the boys come March. However, monetarily they cannot afford any wages for me (which would will be modest at best, perhaps $500 Australian per week at the very highest end of the wage spectrum) for any longer than two months.
All things considered I would certainly put my hand up to come back a month earlier without pay to ensure the boys got a good 12 week intensive program in before the World Cup matches however that still means I would be home in Australia for four-five months before returning, what would I do? I have no idea, probably try and get a short term role in PR and in an ideal world I would be able to visit a few Australian clubs and potentially the AIS Football Academies to observe training and bring back those methods to the boys here to help them prepare for their Qualifiers. Maybe even follow in the footsteps of this man - http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/football/13846140.stm. Don’t worry…. I know I’m dreaming!
Every Friday kids from all over Tonga come in for the national School's Competition - a few shots
Men's team after 6-0 loss to National Champions... was only 1-0 at half time so not too bad!
Women's team after 4-2 loss to Popua... was an awesome effort to nab two goals, hopefully the blokes can do the same next week!
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