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Koko In Action | "Koko"'s Legacy
"Koko"'s Legacy
Carrying On The Role Of A Footballing Pioneer
by Jeremy Ruane
Approximately 600 mourners from near and far gathered at the Romaleigh Funeral Home on May 13 to pay their final respects to one of the all-time-greats of New Zealand women’s football, Debbie Lamb.
Her death five days earlier, at the criminally young age of 46 following a two-year battle with cancer, came at a time when a new phase in her footballing career, coaching youngsters, was just starting to take off.
We will never know her full potential in this capacity - could she, perhaps, have gone on to coach the New Zealand women’s team one day? - but one thing is undeniable. As a player, "Koko" - as she was affectionately known throughout the women’s game - was one of the true pioneers of the sport in this country.
Women’s football officially commenced in New Zealand in 1973, and the national team first kicked a ball in anger two years later, at the Asian Cup in Hong Kong. Despite winning that event, NZ’s women’s team never took the field again for another four years, and in that series against Australia Debbie graced her country’s colours for the first time, aged just sixteen.
Between 1979 and 1993, "Koko" made forty appearances for New Zealand, a tally which currently ranks her in the all-time top ten list of the most capped players in NZ women’s football.
While it’s a respectable tally, perhaps a wee comparison with the record of Football Ferns captain, Hayley Moorwood, will offer some perspective on what might have been.
Hayley made her full international debut in April 2003, less than a year after first appearing for New Zealand on the world stage at U-19 level - representing NZ in age-grade internationals came about long after Debbie had entered her twenties!
Within six years - January 2009, to be precise - Hayley had matched "Koko"’s forty-cap haul, and has since gone on to become just the fourth player in the history of the NZ women’s game to be capped fifty times by her country when clocking up that particular milestone some fourteen months later.
Further, Hayley has played for NZ at least once in every year since making her debut. How Debbie would love to have done the same! For in 1985, 1988, 1990 and 1992, the New Zealand women’s team never graced the world stage at all …
Therein lies a key element of this article - highlighting how the stars of the women’s game today are benefiting from the pioneering efforts of the likes of "Koko", Maureen Jacobson, Wendy Sharpe, Barbara Cox, Ali Grant and their peers.
The stars of New Zealand women’s football’s formative years played a huge part in establishing the foundations for the game, and generally blazing a trail which the likes of Wendi Henderson, Maia Jackman, Amanda Crawford and Terry McCahill have continued to forge during their many years at the very top of the women’s game in Godzone.
The passing of one of these trail-blazing champions - Debbie is the first NZ women’s international to be
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 DEBBIE "KOKO" LAMB
12 June 1963 - 8 May 2010
Requiescat in Pace
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mourned in the 38-year history of the sport in this country - offers the opportunity to appreciate the contributions, great or small, all our former internationals have made over the years.
Their efforts have done much to leave the women’s game in NZ in the rude health it relishes today:
* a handful of professional players dotted around the globe, with the prospect of more to come;
* up to twenty players presently benefiting from scholarships abroad, with more to follow, and plenty of others having done so throughout the past decade or so;
* the country frequently competing on the world stage at noteworthy events such as the Cyprus Women’s Cup, as well as, occasionally, on home turf;
* regularly qualifying for and proving competitive at Olympic Women’s Football Tournaments and both senior and age-grade FIFA Women’s World Cup Finals - heck, New Zealand has even hosted one such event!
Furthermore, less than twenty-four hours after "Koko" was laid to rest, the Junior Ferns were playing Team USA in the first of two international friendlies at U-20 level. Such a fixture would have been a pipe dream / unthinkable in Debbie’s playing days.
How times have changed, and the women’s game across the globe has grown accordingly.
Not all of the changes made locally have been 100% successful, of course. The infrequent attempts of the powers that be to reinvent the wheel every once in a while are a case in point.
Witness the week-long National Women’s Tournament evolving into a two-month-long National Women’s League, which may transform into a National Women’s Development League before too much longer … and where, pray tell, does that leave the numerous senior players for whom representing their province means every bit as much to them as donning the silver fern?
Such a "development" - a term used loosely in this instance - would mean there is next to no chance of anyone clocking up fifty appearances for their province in the years to come. This at a time when we reflect on the contribution made to the game by a woman who scored 74 goals in 93 appearances for Auckland.
There is no way "Koko" would have stood idly by where such a "development" was concerned - it just wasn’t in her nature to accept mediocrity. How could it ever be for one of New Zealand women’s football’s foremost pioneers?
Alas, Debbie Lamb is pioneering the cause of NZ women’s football no longer. But the torch she carried still burns brightly, and is now found in the hands of the likes of Hayley Moorwood, Kirsty Yallop, Rosie White and Annalie Longo - the player whose dribbling skills, for mine, are most reminiscent of "Koko" at her peak.
Their duty is to carry on that pioneering role, carving a path along which New Zealand women’s football will continue to flourish and grow on and off the park, both at home and abroad, a task to which "Koko"’s contribution was immense.
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