Deserved wins to the All Whites

Stuff reports:

Football reigned supreme at the Westpac Halberg Awards with judges and the New Zealand public agreed, 2010 was the year of the All Whites.

The round ball grabbed a hat-trick during last night’s Auckland bash – with rugby overlooked in all but one category – as Ricki Herbert was crowned coach of the year, the All Whites team of the year and the historic World Cup troop also named winners of the supreme Halberg trophy.

When three-time Halberg recipient Rob Waddell and special guest, Corporal Willie Apiata VC, announced the All Whites as the big winners, members of the team were fittingly presented with the trophy by John Adshead and Steve Sumner, coach and captain of the 1982 All Whites who reached the World Cup finals in Spain.

The team also received a personal tribute message from Fifa President Sepp Blatter.

“All the awards, for the players, for the staff, are all great, great honours,” All Whites goalkeeper Mark Paston told Fairfax Media.

I recall the way the country came to a stand-still for each of the games. They truly were our national team.

By coincidence I met Mark Paston on Wednesday night. To my great embarrassment I didn’t recognise him, and asked him what his role is at Telecom (we were both at a Telecom hosted event). A hell of a nice guy I have to say.

I told him how their victory over Bahrain in November 2009 made my Middle East trip much easier, as when in Iran heaps of the locals went out of their way to say how delighted they were that New Zealand has beaten Bahrain (most Iranians have antipathy towards Arab states).

While Richie McCaw is a legend, I thought Ryan Nelson was hard done by not getting the individual spartsman of the year award.