Rodri has been... magnificent for them everywhere against Belgium in this one but they did concede and Charles de Ketelare making it one all with a nice header after Fabian Ruiz had opened the scoring for Spain I don't want to you know necessarily look ahead with a with a comprehensive preview of the semi-final but by the sounds of what you've said about both teams you'd back France to beat Spain?

Yeah, 100%.

France would have to have a really bad day at the office.

Look, anything's possible.

I don't want to rule out Spain completely, but on the evidence I've seen so far... where you've got Mbappe scoring goals.

They're making it look relatively easy.

Even when Paraguay tried to kick lumps out of Mbappe and company, they still found a way to get through that game.

Did they deserve to win this match?

Mm-hmm.

And that's what the Wellington Phoenix have had to do in the women's space, and we saw what happened, them making the grand final and, okay, maybe they didn't have their best half of football against Melbourne City and got undone by a couple of worldies, but, you know, that's, that's what we can achieve, right? Um, bring in, bring in the, the right coach, and how lucky were we that Bev Priestman was available? I mean, say what you want about what happened with Canada, but I think the fact remains she's a, she's a wonderful coach.

Um, and we- we're lucky to have her in New Zealand.

And those, those players would run through a brick wall for her, so you know that she must be the goods.

Um, and so yeah, like you've got, you've got players wanting to play for the Wellington Phoenix.

No doubt there'll be huge interest in the Auckland FC women's team when it comes about.

And, you know, we're talking about the All Whites at a World Cup.

But like, how, how did, how did it start and, and what took you so long actually, Gordon? [laughs]