The Solomon Islands national football team was founded as recently as 1978. The team joined both FIFA and the Oceania Football Confederation in 1988. The team is most famous for an unlikely appearance in the 2004 Nations Cup final.
The Solomon Islands’ first international match was against New Hebrides (now Vanuatu) in 1963. The team won a high scoring game 6-3. In the same year the team suffered their biggest ever defeat, losing 18-0 to French Polynesia (now Tahiti).
World cup 1994 saw the Solomon Island’s début in the competition. A draw with Tahiti in the first match was the team’s sole success. With a single point from four games, the Solomon Islands finished bottom of the group and left the competition.
The team’s best world cup performance to date came in qualifying for the 2006 tournament. Solomon Islands finished top of their first round group after a run of games that included a 6-0 victory over Tonga and a 5-0 win over the Cook Islands. The second qualifying round was the 2004 Nations Cup, with the finalists progressing to round three. Despite being huge underdogs to New Zealand, the team finished second in the tournament. Sadly for the Solomon Islands, the team lost both the cup final and third round match heavily to Australia, so did not qualify.