KEY POINTS:
If you want a depressing scoreline try this: 6-66.
It's a devilishly bad number for football in this country. It is the sum total of the efforts of New Zealand's significant national sides - All Whites, the women, under-20s and under-17s - in internationals against non-Oceania teams since
the middle of this year.
It's not bad, it's screamingly awful.
Since June, the women have played five internationals for five losses and a 1-18 scoreline. The under-20s played five internationals, including three at the world championships, losing five for a 1-12 for and against. The All Whites have played three matches since March and have at least achieved a result of note, a 2-2 draw with Wales, but lost their other two games 0-4 and 0-5 for a 2-11 scoreline.
Surpassing them all is the under-17s who have played nine internationals since June.
Before Friday's encounter with North Korea, they had lost the lot to the tune of 2-25.
For lovers of the round-ball code who rage against what they consider bias against their sport, particularly in the media, this paints an utterly depressing picture - think Edvard Munch's Scream. And it is projected to get worse, with fears the women will be on the end of some fearful hidings at their World Cup in China next month.
The chasm between New Zealand and the real football powers has been most recently highlighted in South Korea where the under-17s were put to the sword against Brazil and badly exposed by an England side that were one step above workmanlike.
In all three cases, the under-20s, under-17s and women reached their respective World Cups by winning the Oceania qualifying tournaments.
This has proved about as useful a preparation as asking a heavyweight boxer to spar against a bunch of flyweights before a world title fight.
Australia recognised this under the stewardship of John O'Neill and packed up their kit and caboodle to head for the more competitive Asian Confederation.
What Australia did was turn down virtual guaranteed qualification for all the age group and women's World Cups (and at the very least a playoff for the men's World Cup) for the chance to play more lucrative and meaningful matches.
Now, when they qualify for major championships, they know they deserve to be there. New Zealand have sadly proved that they don't deserve to be there.
No one blames the kids put out on the park but the fact is that the football they are playing within these shores has left them unprepared to take on the world's best.
What we should have been witnessing was boys against boys. Instead, in football terms, we got babes against men. It was a schoolboy version of Royal Leamington Spa v Manchester United in the fourth round of the FA Cup (though RL Spa might have mustered more of a defence).
Unless New Zealand also extracts themselves from the football wasteland that is Oceania, then it is going to continue to be so.
One small consolation is these tournaments aren't breaking New Zealand Football's bank balance as Fifa pick up the tab.
But it costs the sport something it has to fight so dearly for in this rugby-mad country - credibility.
* The New Zealand under-17s ended their World Cup campaign with a 1-0 loss to North Korea on Friday night.