Oceania Football Confederation
The Oceania Football Confederation is one of the six "continental" confederations of international soccer used for organisation qualification for the Football World Cup.The confederation was formed in 1966 with founding members Australia, New Zealand, and Fiji. Its current membership also includes a number of other small Pacific island nations. It became a fully-fledged confederation for the purposes of World Cup qualification in 1996 for the 1998 Cup, though with only "half a place" (the right to compete in a home-and-away playoff with, for example, the team ranked fifth in the South American qualifying competition to decide the qualification) in the World Cup finals in 1998, 2002, and 2006 the confederation is very much the poor cousin of the football world.
Despite occasional giant-killing performances by New Zealand against Australian sides without their full complement of overseas-based professionals, only the Australian national side, the Socceroos, is regarded as even a potential force in world soccer. The OFC, and its "half place", is regarded by most Australian soccer enthusiasts as an impediment to World Cup qualification. Former Socceroo captain Johnny Warren, for example, has been vocal in advocating the disbanding of the Oceania confederation and that the top two sides from the region (which which be Australia and New Zealand for the foreseeable future) should play in Asia's qualification tournament where they would have a chance to qualify in a sequence of matches rather than only in a do-or-die playoff.
