{"id":44,"date":"2010-12-31T03:37:42","date_gmt":"2010-12-31T00:37:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ubune.com\/blog\/?p=44"},"modified":"2010-12-31T03:37:42","modified_gmt":"2010-12-31T00:37:42","slug":"nz-honours-all-whites-after-world-cup-fairytale","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/ubune.com\/blog\/2010\/12\/31\/nz-honours-all-whites-after-world-cup-fairytale\/","title":{"rendered":"NZ honours All Whites after World Cup fairytale"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>NATIONAL football coach Ricki Herbert and captain Ryan Nelsen received New Year&#8217;s Honours on Friday after New Zealand defied expectations at the World Cup in South Africa.<\/p>\n<p>Herbert was named Companion to the New Zealand Order of Merit in the New Year&#8217;s Honours List, with Nelsen becoming an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit.<\/p>\n<p>Entering the World Cup ranked a lowly 78th in the world, the All Whites finished as the only unbeaten team after draws in the group stage against defending champions Italy, as well as against Slovakia and Paraguay.<\/p>\n<p>It provided a huge boost for football in New Zealand, where the sport is usually overshadowed by rugby union.<\/p>\n<p>Many pundits had predicted New Zealand would be the whipping boys in only their second World Cup appearance, but Nelsen said the team&#8217;s performance had showed the All Whites could compete on a global stage. The Blackburn Rovers skipper admitted he felt slightly uneasy receiving accolades for a campaign that was a team effort.<\/p>\n<p>&#8216;I&#8217;m not a big fan of individual honours within a team sport,&#8217; he said in a statement. &#8216;Every single one of the guys did exceptionally well in South Africa, all 24 of them, so it feels a bit funny to be singled out from an amazing team effort.&#8217;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>NATIONAL football coach Ricki Herbert and captain Ryan Nelsen received New Year&#8217;s Honours on Friday after New Zealand defied expectations at the World Cup in South Africa. Herbert was named Companion to the New Zealand Order of Merit in the New Year&#8217;s Honours List, with Nelsen becoming an Officer of the New Zealand Order of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/ubune.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/ubune.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/ubune.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ubune.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ubune.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/ubune.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45,"href":"http:\/\/ubune.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44\/revisions\/45"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/ubune.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ubune.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ubune.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}