THE New Zealand coach Anthony Hudson gave credit to the home team after the All Whites sealed a place in the FIFA World Cup inter-continental play-off edging Solomon Islands 8-3 on aggregate after the 2-2 draw in Honiara on Tuesday.
“The objective for us is to get to the final. So I think when you win 8-2 on aggregate I don’t think you can complain.
“I think we have to give a lot of credit to the home team today.
“We made five changes in the team you know we don’t have a lot of our first team players for this tour.
“So to get an 8-3 result aggregate and get to the final is a very pleasing result for us,” the All Whites coach said.
Leading 6-1 going into the second leg in Honiara, the All Whites took an early 2-0 lead in the opening 20 minutes.
Myer Bevan opened the scoring in the 14th minutes with a clever finish from two rebounds.
The Solomons who made quite a good number of mistakes in the first leg show centre half Haddis Aengari heads into his own net for an own goal in the 21st minute.
Dual international Micah Lea’alafa made no mistake from the spot to start the comeback for the Islanders.
All Whites goal keeper Stefan Marinovic made some brilliant saves to denied deadly trio Benjamin Totori, Henry Fa’arodo and Lea’alafa in the thrilling final leg of the OFC FIFA World Cup qualifiers.
Former Perth Glory midfielder Fa’arodo make sure the home side bow out with a draw as he sends Marinovic the wrong way from the spot to make it 2-2.
The Englishman stressed it is important to prepare well for the inter-continental play-off possible against Argentina, Ecuador or even Chile.
“Well next is we have to make sure we prepared properly in October, we get all our best players back.
“To be fair we have been following all the teams, its really tight there you know three or two points between three or four teams.
“We are following these teams, so we are looking forward to it,” the jubilant coach said.
By SIMON ABANA
