Western On Chatham Cup Trail

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31124, 29 July 1966, Page 15

Western On Chatham Cup Trail

Canterbury’s Chatham Cup qualifier. Western, takes one more step towards this season’s national final when it travels to Nelson to play Nelson Rangers tomorrow. The winner of this match will be at home to St Kilda, Dunedin, in the South Island final on August 20, the same day that Ponsonby (Auck land) and Miramar Rangers (Wellington) meet in the I North Island final.

The national final will be played at the Basin Reserve on September 3. On paper. Western should

beat Nelson Rangers decisively; on past records, however, it could be a different story. In the last four, years two Canterbury team have gone to Nelson favourites and come back beaten: Western in 1962 and Shirley-Nomads in 1964. On their own ground and before their own crowd. Nelson Rangers are a dour, cupfighting team, prepared to battle for the whole 90 minutes and to take the slightest chance offered to their hardrunning, determined forwards. The danger to Western is that even knowing the risks the club would run by being over-confident, its players might still tend to underrate their opposition. And this would be fatal. Rangers supply a majority of plavers to the Nelson rep-

resentative side, and although this team has twice this season been decisively beaten by Canterbury, there was a marked improvement in Nelson’s performances than on some previous years. Western will be at full strength, with its defence soundly constructed and its forwards fast and potentially dangerous. Rangers have a useful forward line but a defence suspect under pressure. To win, and to win convincingly, Western will need to settle quickly into its stride, cut out elaborate individualism and develop a match-win-ning team effort. Anything less and Rangers could once more send a Canterbury team home with its tail hanging limply behind. The only remaining interest

left in the final round of Hurley Shield matches in Christchurch is Waterside’s last despairing hope of saving itself from relegation. To do so, it must beat Rangers by at least a 7-0 margin in the early match at English Park tomorrow. The championship has already been decided but Christchurch City has one final milepost to pass in the main game against Shirley-Nomads. City has won the Hurley Shield for the third successive year and it will be aiming to retain its unbeaten record in this season’s competition However, Shirley has been a bogey team for City in the last two seasons, having won and drawn more times than it has lost matches between the two clubs. j