City, Rangers Level On Points Again

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31761, 19 August 1968, Page 12

City, Rangers Level On Points Again

The southern league first division soccer championship is still in the balance. Christchurch City took advantage of Rangers not having a match to draw level on points and cut back Rangers’ lead on goal average by overcoming Queen’s Park, 9-0, at English Park.

There is now only another two Saturdays of the league remaining and the competition is at boiling point.

The two clubs meet on the list Saturday (August 31) and before that Rangers have to play the beaten South Island Chatham Cup finalist, Roslyn-Wakari (August 24), and Western (August 28), while City will meet Shamrock next Saturday (August 24).

At present Rangers have a goal average of 6.222 (computed by dividing their goals against into their goals for) and City has 5.846.

Everything will now depend on their outstanding matches, neither side being in a position to concede a goal while scoring as many as possible.

The Chatham Cup finalist, Technical (Christcburen), lost ground In its battle to secure third place money when it lost 0-1 to Northern on Saturday, but recovered some leeway by defeating its Dunedin counterpart, 3-1, yester-

day. Technical is a point ahead and a match in band of Northern, and two points ahead of St Hilda. Two other key matches next

week are the New Brighton v. Shirley-Nomads encounter, which will decide the second division, and the clash of the bottom clubs in the first division, Technical (Dunedin) and Queen’s Park, which will probably decide which club will go down. Results and tables:—

First Division.—Christchurch City 9, Queen’S Park 0; Northern 1. Technical (Christchurch) 0; Roslyn-Wakarl 3, Technical (Dunedin) 1: Technical (Dunedin) 1, Technical Christchurch) 3 (played on Sunday).

Nine Not Enough City beat Queen's Park by nine, but It should be bean more. The Christchurch club was six up at half-time, having missed at least four open goals, and went another 32 minutes before scoring again. There was llttla semblance of order about City when the

team was having almost 100 por eent of the play. Instead of playing It cool and using team-work to break through a packed defence, the City players tumbled over each other trying to score. There were only a few isolated Queen’s Park attacks to bother the City defence and the match quickly lost all interest. It was only a matter of jotting down the City scorers. FOr the record, A. Gowans got four, t). Watson two. and J. Logue, R. Taylor and F. Madrussan one each. They could—and should —have had many more.

First Division Goals

Desperate Measures It v« two days of struggle for Technical (Christchurch) in Its matches at Dunedin. Twice it desperately chased after opponents leading 1-0. falling against Northern, but coming back to beat Technical (Dunedin). Technical had most of the play against Northern and went close to (Coring several times, K. France hitting a post, but the Dunedin club, disputing the third place prize money with Technical, held on to the end. It looked as though Technical (Dunedin) would repeat the process after its lt-yaar-old player. B, Johnson, had given the side the load. However, Technical (Christchurch) finally won control and fine goala by K. Pahl (2) and France swung the balance.

P w D L F A Pts Rang 15 12 3 0 56 9 27 City 16 13 1 2 76 13 27 Tech (Ch> 15 9 1 5 33 20 19 Nthn .. 16 9 2 6 44 33 18 St Ki'lda 15 8 1 6 39 34 17 Roelyn 16 6 4 6 44 35 16 Sham 14 6 1 7 31 44 13 Western 15 6 0 9 23 ll 12 Qu Park 16 2 0 14 22 93 4 Tech (On) 16 0 1 15 21 80 1