World Footy News

Additional reporting by Stephen Alomes.

After Papua New Guinea's narrow win over New Zealand in the International Cup Grand Final worldfootynews.com headed down to the rooms to get the thoughts of winning coach Andrew Cadzow, runners-up coach Robert Vanstam, and we also had a quick word to retired AFL champion, PNG's Mal Michael.

PNG's Cadzow, who is also now the AFL's Oceania Development Manager, spoke about the Mozzies needing to realise they could win and taking that opportunity. "The biggest lesson they've learnt in ten years of footy is that they've learnt how to win". He also talked about retiring champion Overa Gibson and his willingness to go into defence to shut down New Zealand and play the ultimate team role in his last game of international footy. Amua Pirika stepping up as a key forward was also a key moment, one that owes much to Gibson's tutelage over the years.

Tactically Cadzow saw his defence as their strongest group to build the win around, and then rotated numbers through the midfield, slowly wearing down the Kiwis. Good use of the ball going forward added to PNG's all round good game. He conceded both sides could have won the game if they took their chances.

Looking to the future he is very pleased with the overall shape of PNG footy, with a better spread of sizes coming through, and around 20,000 kids playing the game, only likely to be boosted by the win. "We've been back page in PNG for the last two weeks and that will continue. They'll go back heroes".

Audio: Andrew Cadzow on the game and PNG footy

New Zealand coach Robert Vanstam (pictured below left) had similar thoughts in terms of the Falcons losing their structure. "We made too many skill errors, including dropping marks, which led to turnovers. Their forwards led well".

"Our game was based around structure and height but it (didn't work so well in the second half)".

Falcons' Team Manager Jim Lucy (co-coach in 2005) explained that the senior players were generally handling the loss better than the younger guys who hadn't experienced the 2005 win.

All in all Papua New Guinea were wonderful on the night, yet the margin was so close. Definitely a match worthy of a Grand Final. The tremendous rivalry continues.

Also down in the rooms was triple AFL premiership player Mal Michael, himself from PNG and clearly a hero to the Mosquitoes players. Michael has played a quiet off-field role, helping the players out through their campaign. He saw similarities between PNG's win and the Brisbane Lions in 2001, when they over-ran Essendon in the last quarter.

We asked him if he would be involved with football in PNG in future. "Well I'd like to be involved. It depends how often I can get back I think, to get that consistency". Michael, who started with Collingwood, won his flags with Brisbane, then recently concluded his career with Essendon, plans to stay in Melbourne, but would've loved to have represented the country where he spent his earliest years, where his mother is from, and where his father lives. He saw the main issue being that he was still registered as a professional player when team lists were due in. Whether the AFL would've waived the additional eligibility criteria we may never know, though Michael agreed that it would've created more media interest, so could have been for the betterment of the tournament.

Michael was certainly on the field in spirit, explaining the win was a huge relief. "I was really nervous for them, when you're not playing you can't... alter the game. I was really nervous for the boys, but they seemed... they turned up really casual, a lot of them are really casual blokes though".

Audio: Mal Michael discusses PNG footy