No OFC vote 'awkward' for Australia bid
Reuters - Wednesday 01 December 2010, 05:44
SYDNEY - Australia's bid chairman fears
the country's hopes of staging the 2022 World Cup could suffer
after Oceania were denied a chance to vote on the hosts when
their banned president appealed his suspension by FIFA.
Reynald Temarii had previously said he would vote for
Australia but was banned earlier this month after being found
guilty by football's world governing body of ethics violations
and suspended for one year.
Acting Oceania Football Confederation (OFC) President
David Chung flew to Zurich earlier this week hoping to vote
along with 22 members of the FIFA executive committee but was
denied a chance by Temarii deciding on Tuesday he would appeal.
"I sincerely hope it will not depend on one vote," Lowy
told Australian reporters. "It is awkward but we are not in
charge of the awkwardness.
"We are just at work doing our best to make sure that as
many friends as we can have on the executive committee will be
voting for us."
Australia are bidding to host the tournament for the first
time and are up against Japan, South Korea, Qatar and the
United States.
Throughout the campaign Australia have been considered
outsiders and, although ranked as a low legal risk by FIFA in
their technical report earlier this month, concerns were
raised about low television income should they host the event.
Australia have also had to overcome earlier problems of
groundsharing with the more popular home sports of Australian
Rules Football, rugby union and rugby league but Lowy is
convinced those problems are behind them and will not be an
issue.
"If we get it, we will make it as good a World Cup as has
ever been before," he said.