Andy Martin, the new chief executive of New Zealand Football, has clarified his organisation’s position on player availability, presumably in response to Blues defender Tommy Smith making himself unavailable for the recent friendly in Japan and saying he won’t be involved in another friendly in June.

Smith, who was annoyed to miss the Blackpool game earlier in the season when New Zealand strictly enforced a deadline for him to join up with the squad ahead of their World Cup play-off double header against Mexico, opted out of the Japan game to concentrate on Town’s play-off push and says he’ll need a break in the summer.

However, the 23-year-old, who has been capped 27 times by the All Whites, scoring twice, says he has no plans to retire from international football.

“We expect all of our eligible players to make themselves available for selection as we seek to build our programme towards the FIFA World Cup in Russia in 2018,” English-born Martin, who was previously the CEO of rugby side London Irish, said in a statement on Wednesday.

“We have an exciting young squad and we hope everyone selected will want to be involved. Clearly, there will be special circumstances that arise which will be considered on their own merits.”

Martin says the All Whites will look at recruiting a successor to former head coach Ricki Herbert next month with former Wolves and Norwich man Neil Emblen currently filling the role on a temporary basis.

“Once the review process from the previous campaign is completed in April, the All Whites’ coaching job will be advertised globally and we expect a lot of interest.”

Photo: Action Images

SouperJim added 10:51 - Mar 19 They need to start living in the real world and accept players have club commitments too. Otherwise they'll just lose the few quality players that they have.
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WadeyBlue added 10:53 - Mar 19 " New Zealand Chief Expects Players to Make Themselves Available" Well he can sod off then. Our play off ambitions are more important than NZ building up for the Russia 2018. IMO!
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BroskiBeen added 12:50 - Mar 19 WadeyBlue, well in your opinion of course you'd say that, lol
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MattinLondon added 13:10 - Mar 19 Think clubs and countries need to be a bit mature and understanding of each other's needs in order that both club and international commitments can both be met. Saying that if, in the future, Ipswich were to buy Non-European international class players then to a certain extent the club loses their right to complain. As they would know full well that players will be required to travel in order to play for their countries. And playing for your country is the ultimate honour.

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RaymondovicBlue added 15:26 - Mar 19 I agree that it is a real pain to lose players for key league matches, and YES Tommy WILL need a break from football in close season having missed the last one by playing in world cup But if you note the quotes in the above report, the NZ boss does talk about "special circumstances" which I would think would include the likes of Tommy NOT having to play in every friendly that is outside of International breaks. Club v country is clearly a hard one - but as well as being the highest honour for a sports star ... playing for NZ really DID develop Tommy's game massively over the past couple of years so why would we want that to stop for short term gain? And would New Zealand want to lose a potential (or even, likely) future long serving captain just to play the power card over clubs in the summer .... It's called "the Summer break" for a reason : it is in the summer and ....it is a break!

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