Filling In The Faces

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31322, 18 March 1967, Page 11

Filling In The Faces

r pHE Shamrock soccer club 1 has many reasons to welcome its former senior team coach, Mr L. C. Woods, back from England—and not the least for the incomplete mural on one of the walls of the club’s gymnasium in Riccarton Domain.

Mr Woods, a talented sign artist, began the mural three years ago. The foreground is a full-sized goal and goalkeeper: the background, the spectators. To the left of the goal many of the blank faces have been filled in, with the likeness of players and officials who have served the Shamrock club faithfully over the years. There are dozens of more blank faces waiting their turn. Mr Woods, who emigrated to New Zealand from England early in the 19605, is himself a fully-deserved candidate for the mural. He has coached many of the club’s teams, including the seniors, and is a former Canterbury under-20 selector.

He returned to England with his family two years ago, but within a very short time was planning and saving to come back to New Zealand. He arrived in Christchurch last week, “and very glad to be back,” he says. While in England he watched several of the World Cup soccer matches, and England’s victory, he says, confirmed what he had always believed were the secrets of soccer success—“loo per cent fitness, to walk with the ball and run without it, team-work in which every player combines with and covers for a colleague, and a team of 90-minute triers.” “It was not 4-2-4 or 4-3-3 or any other combination of figures that won England the World Cup,” Mr Woods •ays. “It was team-work

and greater fitness, and hard, solid grafting by every player.” Only three hours after arriving back in Christchurch, Mr Woods was out training with the Shamrock players. “That was what I missed in England,” he says. “There, I was just a spectator, with no active interest in the game. Here, I can

coach, seniors or juniors, and feel myself part of the game.” The photographer caught Mr Woods, brush and paints in hand, touching up his gymnasium masterpiece. Since he has been away there have been several Shamrock officials and players waiting to join their team-mates on the wall.