The winner of the Pacific Games will advance to a play-off against New Zealand. Pacific Games 2015, to be played July 4 - 18: Papua New Guinea(hosts) American Samoa Samoa Tonga Fiji
Draw GROUP A New Caledonia Tonga Samoa Solomon Islands GROUP B Papua New Guinea Cook Islands Fiji American Samoa withdrew.
GROUP A July 6 New Caledonia 8 - Solomon Islands 1 Samoa 1 - Tonga 0 July 8 Tonga 2 - Solomon Islands 0 New Caledonia 2 - Samoa 2 July 11 New Caledonia 6 - Tonga 0 Samoa 2 - Solomon Islands 1 GROUP B July 6 Papua New Guinea 5 - Fiji 1 July 8 Fiji 1 - Cook Islands 1 July 11 Papua New Guinea 2 - Cook Islands 0 SEMIFINALS July 13 New Caledonia 5 - Cook Islands 1 Papua New Guinea 3 - Samoa 0 Third Place July 16 Cook Islands 2 - Samoa 0 Final Papua New Guinea 1 - New Caledonia 0
anyone have info on the re-scheduled matches for the OFC play-off? The original matches were scheduled for Oct. 1 & 4, then rescheduled for Oct. 30 & Nov. 1. Those dates have been cancelled.
First leg held today on Papua New Guinea: New Zealand 7 - Papua New Guinea 1 Second leg scheduled for Jan. 26 in Auckland, New Zealand.
Papua New Guinea withdrew from the second leg. New Zealand has qualified for the Olympics. EDIT: Apparently PNG players did not receive visas to enter New Zealand for the second match. The Football Ferns had to quickly organize a match against some guest players so fans had a match to watch. Story here. The match against the guest players starts in 15 minutes, if anyone is interested.
It is sad that they did not get their visa. But crazy as well. You can imagine the uproar if the same thing had happened to a top 10 nations.
So why did they not have visas? Did they just not apply for them in time for the process to go through, or were they denied for some reason? If nations aren't granting visas for top-level sporting events, even sporting events that are in relatively unpopular/unknown sports, that's just messed up.
I have the same question. There's not much I can find other than that the team "did not receive" visas, not that they were denied, so it could be they didn't apply in time as PNG is not a visa-waiver country for New Zealand, or it could be that they were denied. The wording is vague enough to go either way. According to fifa.com, "the withdrawal is being analysed by the chairman of the FIFA Disciplinary Committee, which will decide on whether further steps or investigation is required." EDIT: Just found this article that FIFA has opened a disciplinary case on PNG, but still no clear answer...