Kotahitanga.

Depending on the source, the Maori word translates to a couple of different words, but it’s English meaning essentially is unity.

To the New Zealand women’s soccer team, Kotahitanga is a mantra. It’s why they’ve come this far, and it’s why they have a chance to go further.

“We’ve got the culture that used to be based on a togetherness and a family culture, but we’ve shifted that to retain that family culture but move more towards high performance,” assistant coach Aaron McFarland said.

“And then we’ve got our own New Zealand flavour there, so it’s embraced in a Maori word, kotahitanga, which means togetherness.”

For the first time since arriving in Edmonton, The Football Ferns took to the Edmonton Soccer Complex pitch for training on Wednesday, three days ahead of their first match of the 2015 FIFA Women’s World Cup, at Commonwealth Stadium against the Netherlands on Saturday night.

Of the many things that unite this New Zealand squad, one is belief. Belief they are better than the 2011 side that tied Mexico to earn the Kiwis their first and only point in Women’s World Cup competition. Belief they are better than the 2012 team that reached the Olympic quarterfinal stage for the first time.

Belief in one another.

“We’ve developed a strong culture in this group,” said McFarland. “A lot of these players have been together since 2006, the core of them anyway, and any new players that come in recognize the culture straight away. Obviously the culture needs feeding all the time, but that’s something we’re consistently working on.”

Unity and togetherness are two of the words vice captain Katie Hoyle using when describing kotahitanga and how it applies to her team. Sisterhood is another.

“It’s always been there,” said Hoyle, a 27-year-old midfielder who made her international debut in 2006 and has now earned more than 100 caps. “Kiwis (have) a laid-back personality, anyway. It just gets stronger and stronger as you have more tours together and more games together, so the bond i believe only gets stronger as you go along.”

There is plenty of intrigue surrounding Group A, which comprises Canada, China, the Netherlands, and New Zealand. While the host side is, of course, well known, no one is really quite sure what to expect from the other three, though there is buzz that the Football Ferns could end up being one of the 24-team tournament’s dark horses.

New Zealand was outscored by 10 goals in three losses during their Women’s World Cup debut in 1991. When they finally returned 16 years later, they lost all three again, this time by a combined total of nine. Four years ago they established new team-bests, both offensively, scoring four times, and defensively, conceding six.

This time?

“We want to come into these pinnacle events and be able to show we belong, and that means players fully expressing their capabilities on the football and off the football, and to be able to do that as a team, so that really is the thought that has driven the way we work,” McFarland said.

“We don’t want to be restricting players in the way we train and the way we play, because we want them to unleash their full capabilities, and hopefully that’s what we see.”

FERNS NOW ONSIDE WITH ANALYTICS

If the Football Ferns were an NHL team, they just might be the Toronto Maple Leafs.

Not because they’re the “nation’s team” (which they actually are, while the Leafs merely fancy themselves as such) and not because they have never won the big prize (the Leafs have actually done that, although it’s been a minute), but because of a shared philosophy.

In this part of the world, we call it analytics.

After being eliminated in the quarterfinal round at the 2012 Summer Olympics, the braintrust on the New Zealand women’s soccer team took a long and hard look at the data, and decided that somewhere within all those permutations lay the key to their progression.

“We did our analysis of the games in the Olympics and prior to that, and there was certain statistics that really stood out for us in possession and that we were giving the ball away to cheaply; we weren’t taking possession in the right areas of the field,” assistant coach Aaron McFarland. “We looked at the top performing sides and looked at statistics, how they were performing, and so we need to move closer towards those teams and retain our strengths.”

The modifications in their style has taken time, McFarland notes, but now, with the 2015 FIFA Women’s World Cup just days away, the assistant coach believes New Zealand is now where it needs to be in order to have a better chance at advancing out of the group stage for the first time in Women’s World Cup history.

“We’ve retained the core of what New Zealand sides can do, which is a real pressing, hard-working, defending team, but we’ve tried to develop more cohesiveness and possession,” said McFarland.

In eight friendlies against some exceptionally strong competition in 2015, New Zealand has managed to win only once, but remove April’s 4-0 loss to the United States, and the Kiwis’ goal differential is just minus-one in the other seven matches.

“We felt up until this last month we were in the building process and some of the results may not quite have gone our way, because we’re still working on certain things in our games that we believe that coming into this environment that the players need to do (to be successful),” McFarland said.

- Brian Swane