Dylan Cleaver: Is Adshead up to carrying the empty can?

The greatest moment in New Zealand football history came not when Wynton Rufer blasted one past the Chinese keeper to ensure the All Whites' passage to Spain'82.

Nor was it when the Steves, Sumner and Wooddin, put the frighteners on Scotland at that World Cup.

It came when one drunk man did what every New Zealander watching felt like doing and threw a can at Indonesian referee Harjowasito Sudarso after he awarded Kuwait a second contentious penalty.

It's a paradox, for sure, but that one moment of lunacy represented a fervour for the round-ball code that has never been replicated. The reason why is simple: soccer in this country got complacent.

Need proof, look at John Adshead's appointment as manager of the Kingz, reincarnated as Knights, next to be known as Bishops, before an ill-fated venture as the Queenz and finally sinking without trace as the Pawns.

He was sitting in the dugout during those halcyon days, when 31,000 people packed into Mt Smart Stadium, when rugby was still reeling from the Springboks tour and when cans were thrown at the ref.

Some 23 years later soccer is turning back the clock.

It would be fair to say the Knights chiefs are not doing it on the strength of his CV since 1982. They're doing it because of 1982. In those lean years since, no one has put up their hand and dragged soccer kicking and diving into the modern era.

There have been so many lows.

Average players bitching over money at the Confederations' Cup; the promise of the Kingz evaporating as the public saw that, one, the Australian league was pretty woeful and, two, the Kingz were among the most woeful of the woeful.

At a time when junior numbers have never been higher, the nadir came last year when we lost a World Cup qualifier to Vanuatu (population 159,000).

But the saddest indictment on soccer in this country was not that they lost to Vanuatu, it was the fact New Zealand soccer chiefs were so blindingly arrogant to assume New Zealand would always be in the top two teams in Oceania.

The lack of preparation for the Oceania Nations Cup was never fully investigated because then-coach Mick Waitt didn't have the nous to complain about it until after the humiliation and then-CEO Bill MacGowan's cry of poverty was taken as gospel.

So Adshead has a massive task. He has to get the new Knights winning and convince a fickle public soccer is worth loving again. He's not just managing a private franchise, but soccer in this country.

It might take more than a dodgy penalty to get the crowd on his side.

* Who was the man who threw the can? If it was you, or you know who it was, contact the Herald on Sunday via e-mail.