Fiji national football team
The Fiji national football team is Fiji's national men's team and is controlled by the governing body of football in Fiji, the Fiji Football Association. The team plays most of their home games at the HFC Bank Stadium in Suva. Fiji first participated in FIFA World Cup qualification in 1982; since 1990 Fiji have attempted to qualify for each World Cup without success. Their best result was a final round appearance in 2010. The national team also represents Fiji at the OFC Nations Cup having appeared in eight out of ten previous tournaments. Fiji's best result is a third-place finish at the 1998 and 2008 editions. They have won the Melanesia Cup five times and competed in the Pacific Games from 1963 until 2015 when the competition became an under-23 tournament. Fiji's first international football game was against a New Zealand side that was touring Oceania and had played four games against New Caledonia. The international, which took place on 7 October 1951, saw New Zealand getting the win 6-4. Jock Newall got a hat-trick for New Zealand. New Zealand returned the following year, with Fiji losing all three games, including a 9–0 drubbing in the second match. After being absent from the international game for eleven years, the Fiji Football Association joined FIFA in 1963. That same year, the national team entered the first edition of the South Pacific Games, held in Fiji. In that tournament, the country appeared in its first gold medal match after defeating Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands, but lost the match to New Caledonia 8–2. Marc-Kanyan Case scored four goals for the opposition and Fiji was relegated to silver. After missing 1966, the team's next tournament appearance was in the 1969 Games held in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea. They finished in fourth place out of six teams after losing to Papua New Guinea in the bronze medal playoff. Two years later, Fiji finished at the bottom of Group two with losses against New Caledonia and New Hebrides. They would, however, defeat the Cook Islands in the fifth place play-off.
