A sterling defensive display by Tahiti provided the Football Ferns with a few headaches on North Harbour Stadium’s outer oval on 3 October, before the reigning OFC Women’s Nations Cup holders struck five goals in the last fifteen minutes to clinch a 7-0 victory. The win confirmed a 1pm semi-final on Wednesday for New Zealand as their reward for winning the group, but they were made to work hard for it by a resolute Tahitian team which set themselves up with a sweeper operating behind two banks of four defenders and basically said to Hayley Moorwood and her colleagues, "Break us down". QMAP - quality, movement, accuracy and, especially, patience - were the watchwords the Football Ferns needed to employ in the face of this resistance, but for a team which had scored goals at will in their previous group matches, it took a while to apply these attributes in order to find a way through the maze which constituted Tahiti’s rearguard action. Many’s the occasion, in the second half in particular, when all but Aroon Clansey were camped inside Tahiti’s half of the pitch, such was the Football Ferns’ dominance of proceedings both territorially and possession-wise. They eventually contrived a scoreline which gave a general indication of the game’s pattern, but they and their supporters - both local and from locations as diverse as Hamilton, Germany, Palmerston North, Southern California and Wellington - endured a great deal of frustration along the way. Even inside the first twenty seconds, when Emma Kete - back in the starting line-up after injury - scooted down the right and whipped in a cross which Tahitian goalkeeper Poroni Turana spilled. She recovered the ball at the feet of Rosie White, who was thwarted again by Tahiti’s last line of defence in the fourth minute, after Amber Hearn, Katie Hoyle, Abby Erceg and Ali Riley had combined to engineer a heading opportunity for the young striker, from whom goals will flow freely again sooner rather than later. Tahiti were sticking to their game plan well, a measure of it being that the Football Ferns mustered just one shot of note in ten minutes, and that a long-range effort from Hearn which fizzed past the post. Gradually, however, gaps were being found. Hoyle fed Ria Percival, who scooted between two defenders before crossing low to White, who touched the ball back for Kete. Turana tipped her point-blank-range shot round the post - a fine save. Erceg’s glancing header, from Percival’s resulting corner, was blocked on the line, while only a timely tackle by Maruina Tom Sing Vein prevented White from capping off a move sparked by Hoyle and Moorwood in the nineteenth minute. Hearn was twice thwarted by Turana in the next five minutes, before the goalkeeper produced a sprawling save as Hoyle’s twenty-yard missile cut a swathe through the massed ranks of Tahitian defenders after Riley and White had combined on the left. On the half-hour, Turana spilled a Percival corner, prompting a right royal scramble. Mariko Izal - one of Tahiti’s stand-out players throughout the tournament - was calmness personified in clearing the danger, but succeeded in picking out Percival, who rifled in a cross. It missed Hoyle but struck a defender and ricocheted straight to Turana - not one of those days, surely? The Football Ferns responded with redoubled efforts, and a lovely move to boot. Hoyle led the charge before feeding Hearn, who laid the ball off to Moorwood. She set up Yallop for a ten-yard effort which was begging to be hit hard and low, bottom corner - a textbook striker’s finish. Instead,

Instead, the midfielder’s rising drive was tipped over the bar by Turana. Salvation was at hand, however, from an unlikely source. Bridgette Armstrong was one of three changes coach John Herdman made to his starting line-up for this match, and the young defender had already blotted her copybook by copping New Zealand’s first yellow card of the tournament for an ill-timed tackle which ultimately led to the premature departure of Tahitian midfield general Mohea Hauata. But Armstrong made amends for that blemish by heading home the opening goal in the 35th minute, rising amid the gathered throngs to power home a Percival corner from close range. With the deadlock at last broken, the sense of relief among the locals was palpable. And you could see it reflected on the park - the goal gave the Football Ferns a lift, but such is the science of FIFA ranking points, they needed many more where that one came from. They duly set about building on their hard-earned lead. Kete brought a save from Turana after Hoyle, Yallop and Moorwood had exchanged passes, while Riley fired wide of the mark on receipt of a Percival cross, and White was thwarted by Tahiti’s custodian as she looked to swoop on Kete’s low cross, which had ricocheted off Clara Marahiti in the 43rd minute. There was little change to the pattern of play in the second half - if anything, the Football Ferns’ intensity was greater still. But for a wee while, Turana was equal to just about everything they fired at her. Riley and Yallop, on two occasions, stung the ‘keeper’s gloves in the first six minutes in the second half, while Hearn unleashed a curling effort narrowly past the far post after cutting in off the left flank, and Yallop and Moorwood combined to set up Kete in the 54th minute for a first-time close-range shooting opportunity. Kete opted to take a touch to control the ball, and was instantly closed down, the chance lost. It was mere coincidence that she was withdrawn from the fray seconds later, and Sarah Gregorius introduced to give the Tahitian rearguard problems of a different kind. They certainly couldn’t cope with her initially, for within four minutes, Gregorius had engineered the Football Ferns’ second goal through her willingness to pursue a seemingly lost cause. A rogue pass looked destined to head over the dead-ball line when the substitute swooped to keep it in play, swivelling to deliver a hanging cross with which Turana was, for once, found wanting. Hearn was hovering, and gleefully bundled the ball home - 2-0, and New Zealand’s 300th goal in international women’s football to boot. The Football Ferns now started to slip through the gears. A neat one-two between Hearn and Yallop saw the former invite Moorwood to join the move. Her lay-off allowed Yallop to let fly, the ball ricocheting off a defender for a … goal kick, in the eyes of referee John Saohu. All protests were in vain, so Percival took out her team’s frustrations on Tahiti’s crossbar - via a dipping thirty yard piledriver, of course! Cue a spell of shooting practice for the Football Ferns, with Yallop, Riley and Hoyle firing narrowly wide, while Percival stung Turana’s gloves with a twenty-yarder and Yallop headed narrowly over after Moorwood and Percival had joined forces to engineer the opening. This four-minute flurry was followed by another burst of attacking activity. Moorwood picked out substitute Anna Green, whose glancing header grazed the far post, while Hearn’s bursting run into the penalty area was in vain as a Tahitian hand had

redirected the ball. "You must be joking,referee!" politely sums up the collective response to the official’s decision to play on. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, particularly one pursuing the rare feat of scoring hat-tricks in three successive internationals. Maia Jackman, in the 2003 edition of this tournament, is the only New Zealander to have achieved this milestone, one to which fewer than thirty players, male or female, in the entire history of the game can lay claim. Hearn, with hauls of five goals and three goals in the other group games, put herself well on course to join this exclusive group in the 75th minute with an absolute snorter! Yallop swooped on a goal-kick and steered the ball inside to the striker, who channelled her frustrations from being denied a penalty by swivelling to smash a thirty yard screamer into the top right-hand corner of Turana’s net with such ferocity that the ‘keeper didn’t even attempt to stop it!! Tahiti were stunned, and within sixty seconds, 3-0 had become 4-0. Rebecca Smith - she came on at half-time, and was by now pushing forward from her central defensive role - combined on the right with Percival and Gregorius, the latter firing a cross beyond the far post, where Green was arriving bang on cue to direct the first headed goal of her career back across the target and in by Turana’s left-hand upright. Tahiti were wilting under the Football Ferns’ sustained onslaught, and their confidence was further undermined by efforts from Hearn, Moorwood, Yallop and Gregorius in the next three minutes, all of which were narrowly astray. Cue a fifth goal, ten minutes from time, the culmination of a tantalising move featuring Smith, Moorwood, Percival and Hearn. Yallop was the beneficiary, and from eighteen yards volleyed home her tenth strike in international football. Erceg received the ball virtually straight from the kick-off, and looked to get the better of substitute Tiare White in a one-on-one situation just inside the Football Ferns half. The Tahitian wasn’t having a bar of it, and nicked the ball off the defender before racing towards goal, Erceg in hot pursuit. The defender’s hasty retreat saw her outpace White and clean up a mess of her own making before Clansey had reason to get involved - just as well, for Erceg would hardly have been flavour of the month with her team-mates had their efforts to record a ranking points-earning result been undermined by a needless defensive lapse. In response, the Football Ferns resumed their pursuit of more goals. Moorwood rattled the side-netting, while Hearn and Yallop thrashed shots narrowly past the post. Then, a sixth goal - Smith and Percival the architects, Gregorius the executioner, but only after wriggling her way through three challenges inside two square yards before prodding home from six yards in the ninetieth minute. The Football Ferns weren’t yet finished - the coup de grace in this fifteen-minute flurry of goals was still to come. Percival provided it, direct from a corner, to wrap up a 7-0 win which ended the brave Tahitians’ interests in the tournament, and sent New Zealand into their 150th international - Wednesday’s semi-final at 1pm - in buoyant mood. Football Ferns:     Clansey; Percival, Armstrong (booked, 11) (Smith, 46), Erceg, Riley; Moorwood, Hoyle, Yallop; Kete (Gregorius, 54), Hearn, White (Green, 61) Tahiti:             Turana; Taiarui, Izal, Alvarez, Tom Sing Vein, Marahiti; Bouges, Hauata (Tapotofarerani, 22) (White, 61), Apo, Mai; Maruae (Hioe, 78) Referee:    John Saohu (Solomon Islands)