By HENRY MORABANG
COME this Saturday, PNG women’s soccer team will know whether they qualify for the Olympic Games in Bei-jing, China, in August or not.
Our women will run onto Lloyd Robson Oval in Port Moresby as queens of soccer in the South Pacific region. Having two SP Gold medals under their belt, PNG women will do everything in their books to win the match. The youngest player in the team, Delilah Waive, was not born when PNG sent its first women’s team to take part in what was called Oceania Cup in Christchurch in New Zealand.
Captained by Pansy Sawan, the team was coached by Trobriand Is-lander Noel Vaia who at the first instance had re-quested PNG Football Association under the late Peter Mommers to invest more funding.
Vaia believed back then that women’s foot-ball was the way to go for PNG.
The women’s foot-ball will take PNG to the World Cup one day. Last week, Vaia re-iter-ated his belief that women’s football is the sports that will take PNG to World Cup.
The current coach Francis Moiyap has been responsible for two gold medals for PNG in the past two South Pacific Games.
The big question is that whether PNG are fully prepared to take on New Zealand and whether PNGFA had given the team the necessary sup-port required of a representative team.
Women soccer is more like a flagship of PNG Football Association on the international front, which many armchair soccer critics would agree to.
As usual, PNG will be banking on miracles to beat New Zealand at home. New Zealand are not new comers as they were here last year for the World Cup qualifier in Lae, Morobe province, and swept all that come before them to advance to play Asia winner last year.
PNG also had the chance of hosting the World Cup qualifier in 1994 at Sir John Guise stadium in Port Moresby which Australia won easily disposing New Zealand and Papua New Guinea. Since than PNG has not taken part in any tournament except the South Pacific Games at which they won all their games convincingly – taking gold medals.
Skipper Julie Alau who led the PNG girls to two gold medal victories will again play a leading role in this Saturday’s match.
Can PNG match the fast moving New Zealanders Oceania women soccer football goes back to PNG’s Independence year, 1975. The first involvement of Oceania na-ions in women’s soccer came about in 1975 when New Zealand and Australia were invited to participate in the Asian Cup which was being held in Hong Kong.
New Zealand had a used the trans-Tasman rival matches against Australia as warm-up for the Olympic qualifier. They lost the series 2-1 to Aus-