New Zealand Football Championship side Team Wellington needs NZ$25,000 ($17,915) to "cover an Oceania Champions League budget shortfall," just six days before its first match of the competition, according to Liam Hyslop of STUFF. Club Chair Peter Chote wrote on the club's website on Monday "asking for people to buy a Team Wellington First XI Membership," costing NZ$2,200 ($1,576) each. That "would cover the shortfall," which makes up about 20% of the total cost of taking 25 players and staff to Kone, New Caledonia, for nine days. Chote said that it was not "a matter of missing the tournament" if the club could not find the money. Chote: "We're going, we leave on Friday. There's no chance that I'm aware of that we won't be going, but we do need the support of the local football community and that's effectively what we're asking for. ... We're not trying to make money out of this, we're just trying to deliver a balanced budget." He added that funding the competition "presented unique challenges." He said, "The problem is that the domestic competition is affordable. The O-League is very difficult because you can't get community trust support for overseas events, you don't know from one minute to the next how much it's going to cost you" (STUFF, 2/21).