Sport: Football World Cup campaign begins early for Oceania

Transcript

The road to the next Football World Cup begins early for four Pacific Island nations when the first round of Oceania men's qualifying gets underway this week.

Tonga, American Samoa, Samoa and Cook Islands are all in Nuku'alofa, vying for one spot in next year's Oceania Nations Cup.

Vinnie Wylie reports.

Samoa prevailed when the same teams met in Apia four years ago but head coach Phineas Young says the squad has a new look after being ovehauled in recent years.

PHINEAS YOUNG:  Only three survived from 2011 but most of the players here, they were getting old - they were over 30 - so I decided I will bring in some new players to mix in with the old horses here. We've been starting development of players in the under 12s, under 15s and under 17s in the last three years. Most of these guys they play in the Premier League in Apia so we've been working with them starting from last year so most of the players here they're under 21.

Tonga coach Timote Moleni also has an inexperienced line-up but remains confident the home side can go one better than their runners-up finish four years ago.

TIMOTE MOLENI:  Some of the players here are unavailable to participate in our team but for me it's good to raise up the new players for the future of the Tongan Football Association. I'm very very confident and I hope we win the competition. We expect to win - especially for our supporters to come and support our team in our country.
 

American Samoa made history at the last qualifier, beating Tonga to snap a 30-match losing streak at international level.  Head coach Larry Manao says the goal this time around is simply to do better.

LARRY MANAO:  This year it's young, inexperienced players but these are all building blocks which eventually will give us an opportunity to have a better team, better program in the future. Maybe not this year but we have to look just beyond the pre-qualification tournament - we have to look five years down the road. The goal is to do better of course but we have to look at it incrementally. I think we have reasonable expectations of what that growth and development looks like.

The Cook Islands finished last in the previous qualifying tournament but have high hopes of progressing to the next stage this time around.  New coach Drew Sherman comes with a background working at English Premiership clubs Swansea City, Everton and Southampton, and believes his team can be contenders.

DREW SHERMAN:  I think success for us is giving a good account of ourselves, in terms of the way in which we play and how well we execute that. We finished bottom last time around but we're hopeful. We're aiming to qualify [and] if we didn't think we could realistically do it then there wouldn't be any point in sending a team and preparing them the way in which we have. We're aware there's three other teams with exactly the same expectation and it's going to be tough for each of us.

Cook Islands take on hosts Tonga is the first match this afternoon before neighbours Samoa and American Samoa go head to head.  Each team plays the other once, with the top side at the end of the round robin advancing to the Oceania Nations Cup in May of next year.