Australia 22 - Tonga 0

Australia recorded a new FIFA World Cup qualifying world record in its 22-0 win over Tonga at Coffs Harbour on Monday night.

Damian Mori also managed to earn a personal goalscoring record as with his fourth goal of the afternoon, and Australia's 13th of the game, means he now has 26 A-international goals, overtaking John Kosmina and Atti Abonyi with 25.

But Socceroo coach Frank Farina was highly critical of OFC for organising such a match-up. "It's disgraceful. I don't think we have anything to gain, and (Tonga) didn't gain anything by that either. Oceania should have a look at the format, because it's just not good enough."

Gary Phillips, coach of Tonga was equally as critical of events. "If you look at the value of the Australian team, divided it by five, you've probably got the total economy of Tonga. I don't see the point of some of these (Socceroo) superstars coming back here to play a game such as this."

It's hard to write a meaningful match-report where the game is so one-sided, and where most of the game was played with Tonga defending grimly, and drawing succor from repelling a particular attack, rather than being competitive. Phillips' main aim is to do well against Tonga's neighbouring nations, rather than against Australia, and so the narrow win two days beforehand over Samoa is the yardstick he is applying in this series of qualifiers.

It was truly a procession of goals, with ten scored in the first half including a hat-tick of penalties from captain Kevin Muscat, and four from John Aloisi. Aloisi netted another twice in the second half for six, before he left midway through that half, for Archie Thompson, who garnered one of his own.

But it was Mori's goal-sniffers' deflection of a rocket-like Muscat strike from 30 metres - itself probably goal-bound - which brought up his 26 th goal for Australia that this game will enter the trivia-books. So too will Scott Chipperfield's second after 83 minutes which made it 20-0 and so overtook Iran's previous record of 19-0 over Guam in a World Cup qualifier played in Tabriz on 24 November last year.

But Con Boutsianis - who came on as a substitute for Steve Corica, and Zdrilic with his second after replacing Mori who stretched the new record to a rate OFC and FIFA will surely have to take into consideration when contemplating how to run subsequent qualification tournaments.


written by Alan Clark