Football. We've arrived!

G’day.

Life is fickle. Remember that. In the 50th minute a Slovakian goal pushed us into second-place for the game. My fingers were chewed right up to my armpits as the clock moved relentlessly on. But wait, a 93rd minute was coming. The right time for Winston Reid to head in the equaliser. Yaaaaaaaaaayyy!

That one fleeting moment, closed the chasm between despair and euphoria. Earlier, the same hero was criticised for not defending the Kiwi goal, by apparently being on the 'wrong side' of the marginally off-side, goal-scoring, Robert Vittek. And now, he had 'made amends'.

I don't know a lot about soccer, but the criticism seemed unfounded. At the last gasp, when all seemed lost, many Kiwis were preparing to slouch sadly off to bed, muttering, 'We did well just to get there, you know', until… a defender beat everyone else up front, to score! Yesss!!!

It don't get better than that, baby! Hopefully, it killed of a few 'tall poppy slashers', most of whom would have gone to bed early, cursing the rich, the beautiful and the successful. There must be a variation of '1080' for these miserables…

As a Rugby fanatic, I have to beg the question. After hundreds of minutes of play time, why can't these often over-paid, ego-centric professional prima donnas score more than a handful of goals? Even the 'superstar' Brazilians took 55 minutes to score one.

I so admire the behaviour of our All Whites, who refuse to play the 'other' game, of accumulating 'Hollywoods' to suck out penalties. FIFA should have the guts to give these clowns either a statue for acting or a card for bringing the game into disrepute.

That's what I love about our Kiwi culture. We are essentially up front about stuff. We call a spade a bloody shovel. What you see is just what you get, together with a beer and a song, mate. We don't do "Hollywoods'… just last-minute headers into the corner.

My Speaking schedule has taken me to 57 nations so far. In 1982, I happened to be in London, having just finished some keynotes in Rotterdam. It was my birthday, so I was allowed to steer one of the big Rotterdam Harbour ferries for a few minutes. Kiwis can do anything. And we do.

We settled down to watch the All Whites make our first history, with our first World Cup game against Scotland. Moments before kick-off, my friends' TV died. They had a nice friend in the upstairs flat. So we raced up there to watch it on her set. She was a Scottish lady… Tough, that.

The Scots were up 3-0. We grabbed a couple of goals, to be only 2-3 down. The Scots rallied and took the game out 5-2, before about 36,000 fans. This time we scored only one goal (in scary time), to grab our first point and become equal first in Group F, in front of only 23,871. But Reid did make 'em wild!

So, Rustenburg, the Kiwis have come to play! Now, all we need to do, is to shove those idiot vuvuzelas up a dark place where the sound is muffled. Only a moron could believe their blowflies on rotten meat noise, adds anything but nausea to the event.

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Bill Potter is a ChangeOvator, with THE DU IT GROUP. He is an author, international speaker and strategist. duitdammit@xtra.co.nz

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