The Melanesia Cup

Melanesia Cup

The Melanesia Cup is a football championship played between the Melanesian countries, it was used for qualification to the Oceania Nations Cup. The last edition of the cup was in 2001...

1996 was the sixth Melanesia-wide tournament ever held. It took place in Papua New Guinea

Papua New Guinea

Papua New Guinea , officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea, is a country in Oceania, occupying the eastern half of the island of New Guinea and numerous offshore islands...

 and three teams participated: Solomon Islands

Solomon Islands

Solomon Islands is a sovereign state in Oceania, east of Papua New Guinea, consisting of nearly one thousand islands. It covers a land mass of . The capital, Honiara, is located on the island of Guadalcanal...

, Papua New Guinea

Papua New Guinea

Papua New Guinea , officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea, is a country in Oceania, occupying the eastern half of the island of New Guinea and numerous offshore islands...

 and Vanuatu

Vanuatu

Vanuatu , officially the Republic of Vanuatu , is an island nation located in the South Pacific Ocean. The archipelago, which is of volcanic origin, is some east of northern Australia, northeast of New Caledonia, west of Fiji, and southeast of the Solomon Islands, near New Guinea.Vanuatu was...

 and served for the first time as FIFA World Cup

FIFA World Cup

The FIFA World Cup, often simply the World Cup, is an international association football competition contested by the senior men's national teams of the members of Fédération Internationale de Football Association , the sport's global governing body...

 qualifier. Fiji

Fiji

Fiji , officially the Republic of Fiji , is an island nation in Melanesia in the South Pacific Ocean about northeast of New Zealand's North Island...

 and New Caledonia

New Caledonia

New Caledonia is a special collectivity of France located in the southwest Pacific Ocean, east of Australia and about from Metropolitan France. The archipelago, part of the Melanesia subregion, includes the main island of Grande Terre, the Loyalty Islands, the Belep archipelago, the Isle of...

 pulled out of the competition.

The teams played each other according to a round-robin format with winning the tournament for the first time and qualifying to the next stage of the 1998 FIFA World Cup qualification (OFC)

1998 FIFA World Cup qualification (OFC)

Listed below are the dates and results for the 1998 FIFA World Cup qualification rounds for the Oceanian zone . For an overview of the qualification rounds, see the article 1998 FIFA World Cup qualification....

.

All matches played in Lae

Lae

Lae, the capital of Morobe Province, is the second-largest city in Papua New Guinea. It is located at the start of the Highlands Highway which is the main land transport corridor from the Highlands region to the coast...

.

Results

	Pld	W	D	L	GF	GA	Pts
	2	1	1	0	3	2	4
	2	0	2	0	2	2	2
	2	0	1	1	2	3	1

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