T. Conley s Departure A Loss To Soccer

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31236, 7 December 1966, Page 17

T. Conley s Departure A Loss To Soccer

CANTERBURY soccer Is - not so well endowed with players that it can easily part with such a talented footballer as last season s provincial captain, T. Conley. Nor can it ligtitly part with such a devoted enthusiast for the game, equally off the field as on it

Conley, now 23. is leaving for Australia next month, to take up a highly lucrative contract with the Melbourne club, Hakoah. He will leave with the regrets and the good wishes of everyone in Canterbury soccer.

Since he arrived in Christchurch in October, 1964. Conley has worked, as have few others of his age. to improve the standard of New Brighton soccer in particular and Canterbury soccer in general. Everything he has done for soccer has brought credit to the game and himself, and there has been no more popular winner of the “Sportsman of

the Year” trophy that crowned his performances last season.

Conley arrived In New Zealand expecting to play in the same team as one of his boyhood heroes, the former English international. E. Taylor, who had been brought out to New Zealand by New Brighton to be the ’ club’s first professional coach, But Taylor’s unhappy partnership with Brighton had already ended, so that Conley, at 20, walked into the post Taylor bad held. But there any similarity between the two players ended.

“Dedicated" is one of the most overdone words connected with sports administrators and players, but dedicated is what Conley has been to New Brighton and soccer. There was one bnef interlude in the otherwise happy relationship between club and player when Conley believed that some of the dub’s ariminia-

trators were not putting their full support behind his efforts. He asked for his release. The club reacted immediately by refusing to consider it and then backed its coach to the hilt. The rewards came thick and fast. Last season Conley inspired a young team to the club’s greatest run of successes—an unbeaten record in the indoor soccer competition, the semi-finals of the Chatham Cup, victory in the Keys Cup, and promotion to the first division. When the City centre-half, G. Evans, became unavailable, Conley took over the captaincy of the Canterbury team. It was not a highly successful provincial season for either Canterbury or Conley. Playing in the second division had blunted the edge of Conley’s football, but there was not a match, for his club or province, in which Conley did not give 100 per cent effort.

The greatest memory he will leave to the majority of Canterbury soccer supporters was his brilliance in the mud at English Park in the 1965 provincial match against Wellington. This was a performance none who saw it will forget. Canterbury was 4-2 down when Conley scored a hat-trick, three times dragging the ball through gluey mud, to win the match for Canterbury. Above all, Conley has carried his successes with a modesty that has charmed and delighted all connected with the game in Canterbury. Always he would rather talk about his colleagues than himself, giving praise to others and wanting none for himself. No player who made a goal that Conley scored was left in any doubt of the part he had played. Conley is of a rare breed —the complete fanatic. He loves to do nothing more than talk and read about soccer. His one great desire

was to have been a professional footballer in England. For some time he was with Bolton Wanderers. The border line between those who make the grade and those who fail is slim indeed. Conley came down on the wrong side, when only a little push there and a little luck here would have despatched him on the path he always wanted to take. In Australia, where the rewards are richer and the competition more intense than in New Zealand, he might still find his niche in soccer. But one way or an- . other, soccer will remain his permanent goal. New Brighton and Conley have parted on the friendliest of terms, with the gentleman’s agreement that if he returns to New Zealand, he will rejoin the club. The Canterbury soccer public will wish him well in Australia and hope equally strongly that he will return.