Australia, New Zealand battle for bragging rights ahead of World Cup
FILE PHOTO: Soccer Football - AFC Asian Cup - Quarter Final - Australia v South Korea - Al Janoub Stadium, Al Wakrah, Qatar - February 2, 2024 Australia players huddle before the match REUTERS/Thaier Al-Sudani/File Photo
MELBOURNE :With World Cup fever building on both sides of the Tasman Sea for the first time in 15 years, Australia and New Zealand will fight for bragging rights in a two-friendly series starting in Canberra on Friday.
Both nations confirmed their places early for the 2026 finals in North America and are relishing the time to prepare as other nations sweat through qualifying.
While Australia will be playing their sixth World Cup in succession, the All Whites will return to the global stage for the first time since South Africa in 2010 as huge beneficiaries of the expanded 48-team format.
With Oceania given a full berth for the first time, the 82nd-ranked All Whites were a shoo-in to claim it as the regional goliath.
But big wins over Pacific teams will count for little in the "Soccer Ashes", where New Zealand will find out how they measure up against the noisy neighbours they have not beaten since 2002.
"Australia's done very well, you know, they're ranked 24 in the world, which is amazing and great for them," All Whites coach Darren Bazeley told Reuters.
"But I don't think there's a big, big gulf between the two of us. Results don't show that because we haven't beaten them for 20-odd years.
"But when you look across the both squads, there's a lot of similarities in the level of players and where they're playing."
While the Soccer Ashes lack the profile of the long-standing cricket series between Australia and England, they share a century-long history and a similarly quirky trophy.
The footballing one is an elaborate wooden casket made from New Zealand honeysuckle and Australian maple, containing the ashes of cigars smoked by the teams' captains following one of the nations' first matches in Brisbane in 1923.
The ashes are sealed in a silver-plated razor case that was carried by an Australian soccer official when he served at Gallipoli in 1915, where more than 10,000 Australian and New Zealand soldiers fought and died in one of World War I's bloodiest campaigns.
The trophy disappeared for nearly 70 years until it was discovered by relatives of a former Australian football boss among other football-related items in a garage two years ago.
With the Ashes concept quickly revived, a Graham Arnold-coached Australia beat New Zealand 2-0 in a one-off match in Brentford, England in 2023 to claim the trophy. They will expect to retain it under current boss Tony Popovic.
The matches in the series, which concludes in Auckland on Tuesday, are only friendlies but that has not discouraged the teams' best players from boarding long-haul flights from all over the world to play.
New Zealand captain Chris Wood, who scored 20 goals in the 2024/25 Premier League season for Nottingham Forest, is keen to get one over the Australians for a pre-World Cup boost.
"We want to beat Aussie. It's been a long time since we have," he told reporters in Canberra on Thursday.
"There's been a lot of talk in the media about it. So we want to put that right."
