Players Best Available

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30480, 30 June 1964, Page 15

Players Best Available

IBy Our Basketball Correspondent

The inclusion of P. Simpson and R. Spark in the Canterbury team to contest the South Island men’s basketball championships at Invercargill on July 10 and 11—one of the two main tournaments on the provincial representative calendar—can hardly be regarded without some twinges of apprehension. Illusions that the chief coach-selector, Mr P. Doogue, is really scraping the bottom of. the barrel! are hard to banish. Neither player was included in the regional tournament team, a qualifying event for the New Zealand championships. Simpson is a typical example of a player having completely lost his touch after a too rapid rise to the top. He has proved extremely impressionable .in the past and ajl aspects of his play, including, the basic fundamentals of handling and

shooting, have deteriorated sadly. However, it is still difficult to forget his outstanding performance against Melbourne Y.M.C.A. at the beginning of last season and earlier comparable efforts. The case of Spark is somewhat different. He is an excellent player considering his experience and should be an asset to Canterbury in years to come. But the fact that this is his first season in the A grade (inter-club) cannot, be overlooked. How he will stand up against the leading Nelson and Dunedin players is difficult to forecast, notwithstanding a good effort at the recent South Island B grade championships. Only one player, M. Bach (Wigram), who played in the recent regional tournament, has failed to find favour with the selector. Bach failed to score either against South Canterbury or Mid-Canter-bury at the tournament.

The South Island tournament team could hardly be descibed as one of Canterbury’s best, and indeed it will probably be fortunate to avoid taking bottom place. This is a distressing situation brought about by the large numbers of top players either unavailable or not eligible for representative matches. The selector has chosen the best available players, and if they do not measure up to the required standard there is very little that can be done about it, at least for this season.