The Oceania Football Confederation is one of the six "continental" confederations of international soccer. It promotes the game in Oceania and allows the member nations to qualify for the Football World Cup.
The confederation was formed in 1966 and the founding members were the Australian Soccer Association, New Zealand Soccer, and Fiji Football Association. On May 24, 2004, New Caledonia became the 12th member of the OFC.
OFC became a fully-fledged confederation in 1996, for the purposes of World Cup qualification for the 1998 Cup, with only "half a place" (the right to compete in a home-and-away playoff with, for example, the team ranked fifth in the South American qualifying competition). The Confederation is very much the poor cousin of the football world.
Despite occasional giant-killing performances by New Zealand against Australian sides without their full complement of overseas-based professionals, only the Australian national side, the Socceroos, is regarded as even a potential force in world soccer. The OFC, and its "half place", is regarded by most Australian soccer enthusiasts as an impediment to World Cup qualification. Former Socceroo captain Johnny Warren, for example, has been vocal in advocating the disbanding of the Oceania confederation and that the top two sides from the region (which would be Australia and New Zealand for the foreseeable future) should play in Asia's qualification tournament where they would have a chance to qualify in a sequence of matches rather than only in a do-or-die playoff.
The OFC members also play for the Oceania Cup, which is held every second year.
