Otago Daily Times photographer Craig Baxter
has been to a rugby game at the Melbourne Cricket Ground that
was played in front of 100,000 fans but he has never
experienced an atmosphere like Saturday night. He explains
why photographing the All Whites' win was such a personal
odyssey.
If there is such a thing as a quiet football fan, I am one.
The quiet football fans, they don't talk football with the
football nutters at work, mainly because they don't have
their knowledge.
They love the game and watch it as often as they can, but
they don't religiously follow a team, know all their games or
all their players.
They just love watching the game.
Not able to play sport growing up, I became what you might
call an avid sport "watcher".
Big league soccer on Sunday was a weekly highlight, but the
FA cup was always the biggest game of the year.
Every year my father, never a sports fan, would wake me, cook
cheese on toast and watch the game with me.
He must have hated extra time, but I thought life couldn't
get better.
Then, in 1981, something magical happened.
There was a new team on our television.
They were called the All Whites.
My football watching became an obsession.
I had the posters, the books, the coffee mugs, the lunchbox.
I taped every game on the radio.
My Subbuteo (football table) scoreboard came with the names
of every soccer-playing nation in the world except New
Zealand.
I added us on.
My blue and white Manchester City team (I was a United fan
before it was cool, but I always ended up with blue and white
players) became the All Whites, the road to Spain re-enacted
on the Subbuteo pitch.
The '81-'82 team was the most unlikely mob of sporting
heroes, but me and my friend Tony knew everything about them.
Photographing the men of that great team 28 years later
brought back all those great memories.
Seeing those now middle-aged faces with their familiar names
on the pitch again, with 35,000 people cheering them on . . .
well, let's just say it was enough to bring a tear to most of
their eyes, and maybe even to the eye of a quiet football
fan.
1981-82 was the highlight of my sport-watching career and
Tony and I thought we'd never see a New Zealand team at the
biggest sporting event in the world again.
I picked up a love of sports photography while shooting
friends playing football for mighty Mornington.
Since then I've been lucky to photograph some incredible
sporting events - in fact, I have a bucket list of events I
still want to cover - but the atmosphere in Wellington on
Saturday was something very, very special.
Those 35,000 people at the Cake Tin made more noise than
100,000 at the MCG, hands down.
Being on that sideline, looking up at that hyped crowd and
just knowing you were about to be part of New Zealand
sporting history made all those Saturdays on the freezing
cold sidelines of Mornington Park well worthwhile.
Does it surpass the 1982 road to Spain?
It's too soon to say.
I was too nervous to enjoy the game and it wasn't until I
watched the replay later that it sunk in that we were really
going to the World Cup.
Photographing the All Whites qualifying for the World Cup -
bucket list tick.
