Soccer: Show-stopper Paston unfazed by frenzy

Goalkeeper Mark Paston celebrates the All Whites' win against Bahrain.Photo / Getty Images

The media couldn't get enough of Mark Paston on Saturday night, but when they finished with the All Whites goalkeeper he discovered, to his horror, the team bus had left without him from the Westpac Trust Stadium for the Copthorne Hotel along Oriental Parade.

Furrows appeared on his forehead fleetingly as he scanned the horizon from the side entrance to the Cake Tin, but the 32-year-old from Hastings didn't flinch.

He kept his cool, just as he had done almost two hours earlier when smothering a 50th minute penalty kick from lanky defender Sayed Mohammad to send 35,194 delirious New Zealand fans into raptures of celebration.

That save helped the All Whites beat Bahrain, and book their flights to South Africa for the 2010 World Cup finals, the first time in 27 years and only the second time in New Zealand's history of the beautiful game.

The 1-0 victory in the Asia/Oceania qualifier was enough after Bahrain dominated the opening leg at home in Manama but failed to score - for which they paid dearly on Saturday night again despite dominating the early stages of the game.

While the press made much of striker Rory Fallon's 44th-minute goal, indubitably the match will go down in history for that penalty Paston thwarted.

Fallon was 3 months old when his father, Kevin, was assistant coach of the All Whites' previous trip to the 12th World Cup in Spain in 1982. Paston has a 10-week-old son, Jack, as the new heir to that throne.

Whether baby Jack will ever attain the legendary status bestowed on his reluctant hero of a father, let alone lace up a pair of soccer boots, only time will tell.

Suffice it to say Jack was snuggled up in a baby pouch with his mother, Amie, in a seat in section 32 of the stadium pulsating to a capacity crowd. He blissfully slept through the din, a cacophony to which his mother was adding.

Paston said: "He [baby Jack] was strapped in front of my wife, so [it's something] good to look back on."

The goalkeeper, who has settled in Wellington with the Phoenix franchise in the A-League, wasn't sold on the "legendary" status and other countless superlatives some in the media were throwing around like confetti at the press conference.

"I'm a little uncomfortable with that sort of talk, but yeah. Look, Rory scored the winner and the boys defended amazingly, especially for the second half, so I'm pretty uncomfortable with vogues."

By his admission, the whole week and preceding months had come down to 90-plus minutes on one night.

"It was amazing and obviously a fantastic feeling to win the game and get through to the World Cup, but I don't think it has really sunk in just yet because of the enormity of it all," he said as the country waits to find out on December 4 who the All Whites will play in South Africa next year.

The game went pretty quickly for Paston, but the last five minutes seemed to take forever and post-match was "all a bit of a blur" for the man proclaimed the player of the match.

While happy with their defence, Paston felt the Kiwis didn't keep the ball as well as they would have liked to but, at the end of the day, he reconciles that with a mission accomplished.

"We threw our bodies in front of the ball at times when we had to and we did what we had to to win the game," he said, confessing he couldn't remember if defender Tony Lochead's penalty incident was warranted in the 49th minute.

While the general feeling is that a keeper has a 50 per cent chance of saving a penalty kick, Paston said it was more complicated because kickers sometimes struck the ball down the middle.

"Apparently they've done some research and the bench tried to tell me to go that way. Well, I didn't hear them and, luckily, I guessed that way."

He found it incredibly hard to describe the relief when the referee took the ball off his hands to signal the end of the match.

"It's been a tough week with a lot of pressure, obviously. It's been hard eating and sleeping, but just happy we've finally done it."

The All Whites had practised penalties, he said, but more for the kickers.

"You try to make them [kickers] wait a bit longer, which I tried to do, and you tend to throw in a few other things. A lot of it is luck - sometimes he goes the wrong way and sometimes the right," said Paston, who had made up his mind to go one way, adding Mohammad had hit it reasonably well but not very wide, although he was surprised a defender took the kick.

For someone used to 10,000 Phoenix fans at the stadium, the full house had adrenalin pumping through his veins.

"It's almost like that extra man you need," said Paston who eventually took a cab to the hotel.