2002 OFC Nations Cup qualification

Qualified teams

Team	Appearance	Streak	Previous appearance
Australia	5th	5	2000
Fiji	4th	1	1998
New Caledonia	3rd	1	1980
New Zealand	6th	6	2000
Solomon Islands	4th	2	2000
Papua New Guinea	2nd	1	1980
Tahiti	6th	6	2000
Vanuatu	5th⁽¹⁾	2	2000

¹Includes two pre-independence appearances as the New Hebrides

Qualification Procedure

With the end of the Polynesian and Melanesian Cups between the 2000 and 2002 tournaments, (the two competitions formerly served a secondary function as qualifiers for the Oceania Nations Cup), a new format was created to decide the teams which would be accepted for the Nations Cup. Retaining their round-robin group qualifier style, the OFC this time chose to adopt the FIFA rankings to order all the entrants. With New Caledonia not yet a FIFA member, they were placed last by default. The lowest six teams were then made to compete for two places via a round-robin group stage, with the highest-placed two teams qualifying for the Oceania Nations Cup.

The Rankings of all the teams involved in the OFC Nations Cup are below. The positions were taken as of October, 2001, with the eleven ranked teams appearing in the following order:

Rank	Team	Points by Oct 2001
48	Australia	586
84	New Zealand	477
123	Fiji	349
128	Tahiti	336
134	Solomon Islands	309
168	Vanuatu	182
172	Samoa	158
175	Tonga	151
176	Cook Islands	147
195	Papua New Guinea	56
201	American Samoa	16

Qualifying Tournament

Before the first group stage began, the Cook Islands withdrew, resulting in the group stage being played between only five nations.

Results

Pos	Team	Pld	W	L	GF	GA	GD	Pts	Qualification
1	Papua New Guinea (H)	4	4	0	20	2	+18	12	Advance to 2002 OFC Nations Cup
2	New Caledonia	4	3	1	25	4	+21	9	Advance to 2002 OFC Nations Cup
3	Samoa	4	2	2	8	9	−1	6
4	Tonga	4	1	3	7	18	−11	3
5	American Samoa	4	0	4	2	29	−27	0
6	Cook Islands	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	Withdraw

Source:
(H) Host.