Soccer: Tahiti club ends City's chances

Auckland City's hopes of winning a place in the Fifa world club soccer championships were dashed in Tahiti last night when they went down 1-0 to local hopes AS Pirae in the second round of the Oceania Club Championship.

Locked 0-0 at halftime, the match-winning goal came in the 51st minute.

That goal from Raimoana Bennett sparked celebrations among the crowd and, not surprisingly, encouraged the AS Pirae players to pack their defence to ensure there would be no way back for the New Zealanders.

It was a bitterly disappointing result for the players in the Allan Jones-coached side who won their place in the eight-team tournament by winning the inaugural NZ Football Championship.

Their unlucky first-up loss to Australian champions Sydney FC may have come at a cost as they failed to quite reproduce that form in this must-win game.

From the time they scored, the Tahitians had five or six players behind the ball, said NZFC manager Glyn Taylor.

He said: "To be fair, up until that point they had looked half a yard faster.

"Once Auckland City fell behind, they lifted their game and for the last 20 minutes were the better team. They had one chance which the Tahitian goalkeeper Teva Durot did well to keep out and four minutes from time captain Neil Sykes hit the post."

Jones rung the changes with Joel Mathews replacing Riki Van Steeden at halftime and later bringing on Chad Coombes (for Chris McIvor) and Reg Davani (for Paul Urlovic).

With two wins from their first two games, the home side, regarded initially as the second-best of the two Tahitian representatives, were the first team to book a place in the top-four playoffs.

Auckland City will play their last match against Papua-New Guinea side Soubou FC tomorrow before returning home on Monday.

Sydney FC beat Soubou FC 9-1 in the second of yesterday's games to join AS Pirae in the last four.