OFC

The logo is even old school Tampa Bay Devil Ray colors...
OFC the Tampa Bay of World Football

 As lovers of perennial underdogs, we here at the Montanan Hooligans can't help but love the Oceania Football Confederation. Honestly, there is no earthly chance that the Cook Islands will hoist the Jules Rimet Trophy in 2014 (or any year after that), there's barely a chance that a heavyweight team like New Zealand will do it....and yet the OFC throws down for the pure love of the game--long odds be damned, it's the World Cup and they'll play if they want to!

Teams in the OFC aren't really minnows, they're more like krill, but even krill deserve our attention now and then, so it is with pride that we share this, our OFC page with you.

2014 qualifying started out in fine form at the end of November 2011, with four tams playing against one another for the right to get their butts kicked by big bad Vanuatu in Round 2

Round 1 Winner and Losers were

Samoa

Tonga

American Samoa

Cook Islands 

Round 2 doubled as the OFC Nations Cup (June 2012 @ Fiji) with two groups of four fighting both for the right to make the Confederations Cup AND the chance to play each other again in Round 3 of qualifiers

Round 2 Groups (and winners) were:

Group A                          Group B

Tahiti (won Cup)          New Zealand 

New Caldonia               Solomon Islands    

Vanuatu                         Fiji

Samoa                            Papua New Guinea

As nice as a good showing in the OFC Nations' Cup is, it's not the same thing as getting to the really big show in 2014. To get to Rio, the four playoff teams had to compete in a set of home-and-aways amongst themselves.

The Round 3 Group (and winner) was:

New Zealand

New Caldonia

Tahiti

Solomon Islands

After they won, New Zealand still had one final hurdle to leap in order to qualify for the cup: a battle with Mexico, the CONCACAF 4th place finisher.

And they lost. So the OFC will have to wait and hope for better luck in 2018