About to kick off in just over 10 minutes live on rte2.
All over the Russians -1 at 10/11 here in the opener
Russia well on top already. Just struck the post and the rebound cleared off the line. New Zealand keeper looks woeful
That -1 looks nailed on. Matter of time before Russia score
Another one cleared a yard off the line
NZ keeper looks fucking hopeless.
Plays in the fourth tier in Germany.
Great bit of trivia from Jim Beglin there
Terrible dive there by the Russian
Awful defending leading to it
Yeah. Is there not meant to be video reffing in this?
Smolov looks good. Will be interesting to see how he does against the better teams
The keeper is some bomb scare 
Russia finally take the lead. New Zealand are desperately poor
Finally 1 nil
Not in that instance but NZ keep getting caught out by really shit long balls going over their heads
Even the offside chance just before was a just a bog standard straight ball and they were all over the place. Bread and butter stuff
Credit to the New Zealand keeper, decent double stop there
The lively Smolov makes it two nil after a nice break, left back caught too infield and it is walked into the net
10 of NZs starting 11 tonight started in their friendly against cabinteely on june 6 where they won 5-2 down in stradbrook,
this is from an article i did on NZ for another site before they played NI on june
some squad background, etc
New Zealand, lying 95th in the FIFA rankings, arrive in Belfast for tonight’s friendly currently only two steps away from reaching the World Cup in Russia next summer. They face a two legged playoff against Oceania rivals Tahiti in September in the OFC final and should they negotiate this they will face the 5th place CONMEBOL (South American qualifying) side to determine who will progress.
The All Whites had to overcome minnows Fiji and The Solomon Islands to secure the playoff berth against Tahiti.
However, recent friendlies where they drew 1-1 with the USA in Washington DC and a 2-1 reversal against Mexico give a more realistic measure of New Zealand’s current position in world football despite their lowly ranking and the standard of opposition that they had to encounter in World Cup qualifying.
New Zealand are managed by Anthony Hudson, The Englishman who previously had spells in charge of Newport County in 2011 and with the Bahrain national team until 2014 when he took up the role with the All Whites.
Under Hudson New Zealand jumped 66 places in the World Rankings from 154 to 88 in 2016. Lack of games against quality opposition is something that New Zealand have to deal with, having played only 3 games in 2015 Hudson will relish these games against Northern Ireland tonight and against Belarus in Minsk on June 12 before his squad head to Russia to compete in the 2017 FIFA Confederations Cup where they will face the host nation, Mexico and Portugal in Group A.
Chris Wood is probably the most familiar name in the current 23 man squad. The Auckland born striker who spent time at Leicester City before moving to Leeds United was top scorer in the English Championship last season with 27 goals. Wood is expected to captain the side in the absence of West Ham United defender Winston Reid who has been out injured since March.
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Other European based players include Ryan Thomas who plays regularly with PEC Zwolle in the Dutch Eredvisie and Themistoklas Tzimopoulos who is ever present for Pas Giannina in the Greek Superleague.
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Wellington Phoenix, the only professional club in New Zealand and who finished 7th in last season’s Australian A-League contribute 5 players to the squad, there are also three other English based players in the travelling party Monty Patterson at Braintree Town, Sam Brotherton who didn’t feature for Sunderland and Tommy Smyth at Ipswich Town
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Mexico are always very underrated and not much talk about them in football tournaments
Scenes as Moreno levels it in injury time