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2009
New Job Further Enhances Priscilla's Football Story
by Jeremy Ruane
Priscilla Duncan's recent appointment to the role of Oceania Football Confederation Media & Communications Officer caps off a hectic five years for the twenty-times-capped Football Ferns midfield general.
One of the classiest players to ever sport the silver fern, the multi-talented Miss Duncan has amassed a raft of footballing experience on and off the park in this time, supplementing her unique blend of on-field skills with journalistic talents acquired while studying at home and abroad to make her the ideal candidate for her new position.
It's certainly a far cry from her Wellington roots, which she briefly reflected on in a 2007 interview. “I was six, and my family wasn't a very sporty one. But I had some cousins who played a lot of sport, so I basically started playing the game with some school friends and have loved it since then.
“I was with Waterside Karori in my first year, 1989 - my Dad was coach. A year later, the family moved up to Auckland, and I played through all the midget grades and things went on from there”.
They certainly did, Cil's blossoming talent seeing her secure a raft of prized individual honours by the time she was twenty, specifically:
 1999 & 2000 Auckland Secondary Schoolgirls Player of the Year;2001 Northern Premier Women's League Young Player of the Year;2001 National Women's Knockout Cup Final MVP;2002 & 2003 International Young Player of the Year.Throw in her lone honour at club level to that point in time - Ellerslie's 2001 National Women's Knockout Cup triumph - and her four caps for the Football Ferns in 2003, not to mention those earned at age-grade level, and it's not hard to appreciate why she is widely regarded as one of the finest players of her generation.
And that was before her overseas adventures, which added polish and refinement to a midfielder already blessed with skill, subtlety, flair and finesse, and an ability to combine her uncompromising tackling with an eye for the defence-splitting pass.
“Southwest Baptist University was a great experience”, she reflects. “The opportunity came about in 2002. Sandy Davie was the NZ U19 coach at the time, and he approached me on behalf of the SBU coach, Pete McGovern, an English guy who was a great coach.
“I took up the opportunity on my own initially, but Pip Meo, Hayley Moorwood and Rachel Doody ended up joining me. My first three years there were really good, but my fourth year wasn't quite as memorable because we had a change of coach and players, etc.. Overall, though, a really, really good experience”.
Priscilla and her Kiwi colleagues were instrumental in securing a first-ever appearance in the NCAA Division Two National Tournament in 2004 for SBU's “Lady Bearcats”, a year after Cil's dominating displays had earned her selection in the all-MIAA Second Team.
In 2005, a year before graduating from SBU, Priscilla was a final nominee for the MIAA Student-Athlete of the Year award, an honour which embraces all the sports played in all the colleges within the Mid-America Intercollegiate Athletic Association's jurisdiction, and which recognises academic ability as well as athletic prowess.
“Playing for SBU is one of the highlights of my career. My last game for them was quite emotional. After graduating from there, I went to London before hooking up a trial with Rebecca Smith's team, Sunnana, in Sweden in March 2006.
“I enjoyed it - it was a three-day trial - but it didn't really work out for me in the end. I wasn't quite the player they were looking for. So I went back to London and played for a team there, but not at a very high level”.
It wasn't too long before Cil was heading back across the Atlantic. “I went to West Michigan Fire, teaming up with Rebecca O'Neill and Pam Yates to play in the summer league there. Again, a really good experience. A different coach, but the same sort of style as Pete McGovern, in a way.
“They were a really good group of girls, and a lot of fun. It was good opposition, too, and a bit disappointing for us results-wise. We struggled with people staying committed to our team. We had a lot of college players that were off on holiday here and there.
“After West Michigan, and a brief trip home, it was off to Denmark, specifically SonderjyskE, the pick of the teams I played for in 2006. That was a really good experience”.
Part of it was the opportunity to work with a legend in Danish women's soccer circles, Lene Terp. “She had been a really experienced player, making over 100 appearances for Denmark. She was the Danish captain, too, and I really enjoyed her coaching.
“Pam Yates and I had awesome players around us -
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three of the Danish U20s and girls who'd played through the age groups. Even though it was a Second Division team, it was an up-and-coming team. We dominated our league, so sometimes the games were a little bit easy.
“We had a couple of cup games in which we surprised a few people, including an upset 3-2 victory secured in the last few minutes against a First Division club. That was a really good team effort, and very enjoyable.
“From a playing perspective, I've got that contact available to me if I ever want to go back there. I'd love to go back when they're in that top league, possibly for a full season”.
That she hasn't yet taken up that opportunity is a result of international commitments which Priscilla has been afforded over the last couple of years, on and off the pitch. She returned from Denmark armed with her various degrees from SBU, and a fair idea of how she intended using them.
“While at SBU and afterwards, I worked at an American newspaper, and was writing on the website in Denmark - getting little bits of experience like that are really good. But I'm back here for the foreseeable future now”, she said at the start of 2007, “and will be studying Journalism at the Auckland University of Technology.
“I don't know where journalism will take me, but hopefully around the world as well, maybe to use with my soccer - I'm not sure”.
As things have turned out, that's exactly what has happened. Priscilla was awarded a University Blue for her scholastic efforts in 2007, and last year was one of the key behind-the-scenes contributors as her media skills were unleashed upon the FIFA U-17 Women's World Cup Finals.
So successful did she prove herself in that role that when the Oceania opportunity came up, her appointment was a `no-brainer', certainly from this writer's perspective. But her World Cup duties did come at a cost to Priscilla, in the biggest year New Zealand women's football has ever experienced.
During the close-season at SBU, Cil had been back on her old stamping ground, dominating the midfield encounters as she lined up for Ellerslie (2003 league and cup runners-up), and Three Kings United (the same achievements in 2004).
She didn't return for either the 2005 or 2006 campaigns, but in 2007, she joined the revolution at Western Springs, and was instrumental in their winning the National Knockout Cup that year, and their maiden Northern Premier Women's League title triumph in 2008.
Her form - classic Cil - was such that national recognition was almost a given. After earning her first four caps in the OFC Women's World Cup qualifying campaign in 2003, during which she scored her only goal for New Zealand to date, she twice added to her caps tally at the 2004 Australia Cup tournament.
Bookings in the first two games of same meant her presence was sorely missed as North Korea inflicted upon New Zealand its heaviest ever defeat in the final game of that tournament. But Cil was back for the two clashes with the USA later that year, and the Japan international in 2005.
Her next three appearances for her country were in 2007, as a substitute - the two clashes with Australia in Canberra, followed by the second match against Canada in Auckland, a performance which did enough to earn Priscilla a starting place in six of the Football Ferns' next eight matches.
Three of those matches took place at the 2007 FIFA Women's World Cup Finals, which realised one of Priscilla's goals for the year, as she outlined in an interview conducted at the start-of-year training camp.
“My ambitions this year are to make the World Cup squad, be competitive there - win some games, and do all that I can to help this team achieve this year, going on hopefully next year to the Olympics.
“That'll be a particularly awesome experience. Indeed, I regard all of my experiences with the national team as career highlights, along with scoring my only goal for New Zealand, against Papua New Guinea in 2003. Hopefully there'll be more of those to come, too!”
The World Cup experience certainly was an awesome one for the tigerish midfielder, Priscilla being one of nine Football Ferns to play in all three games, against Brazil, Denmark and China.
Her U-17 World Cup work as the tournament's Media & Communications Officer precluded her Olympics dream, however, and the recent thirty-three-strong extended training squad named by Football Ferns coach, John Herdman, suggest that a young lady who last played for her country in December 2007 isn't even in the frame at present.
Priscilla Duncan knows what she has to do to put that situation to rights - any talk of her being a former Football Ferns international is decidedly premature, make no mistake.
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