£240,000 Player In Team To Make N.Z. Tour

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 31943, 21 March 1969, Page 13

£240,000 Player In Team To Make N.Z. Tour

(Btl Our Soccer Reporter)

A player who has cost more than £240,000 in transfer fees and another whose transfer demand ended in a High Court case that drastically changed the status of British soccer professionals, are included in the English Football Association team to play seven matches in New Zealand at the end of May and the beginning of June.

The man with the “big price on his head” is the Coventry City centreforward, Tony Hateley, who has variously played for Everton, Chelsea and Tottenham Hotspur.

The man whose action made it possible for players in Britain to earn up to £lOO a week is George Eastham, of Stoke City, formerly with Newcastle United and Arsenal. The English F.A. team, announced yesterday, is: J. Armfleld (Blackpool, captain). A. Hodgkinson (Sheffield United), J. Shippey (Oxford City), D. Megson (Sheffield Wednesday), J. Charles (Leytonstone), K. Knighton (Preston North End), K. Eddy (Watford), A. Bloor (Stoke City), N. Piper (Plymouth Argyle), D. Payne (Crystal Palace), Eastham, B. Rioch (Luton Town), Hateley, C. Dobson (Huddersfield Town), N. Young (Manchester City), C. Gedney (Alvechurch).

To Play Canterbury

The name of one further player will be announced at a later date. Charles and

Gedney are amateurs and the other 14 players named are professionals. The tourists will play one match in Christchurch, against Canterbury under floodlights at English Park on Wednesday, May 28. Other games will be against Auckland, Otago, the central league, New Zealand Xis (twice) and the full national side.

Eastham, a full English international and son of an equally famous football-play-ing father who also represented his country, fell foul of the English League transfer regulations when he asked to leave Newcastle in the late 19505.

The club and player became involved in a long dispute— Eastham refused to play and Newcastle asked a transfer fee out of all context to then market values.

Backed by the Players’ Union, Eastham took his case to court, forced the club to seek a more realistic fee, made invalid the contracts by which players were previously held by their clubs, and paved the way for the new contracts in force today. Hateley, for several years one of the most dangerous forwards in British soccer, became one of the few sixfigure players when he was transferred from Everton to Chelsea for £lOO,OOO. All his other moves have also involved huge sums of money changing hands, until the last to Coventry, which amounted to £40,000.

Armfield and Hodgkinson will be making their second visits to New Zealand—this time as team-mates. In 1966 they toured with their respective clubs, Blackpool and Sheffield United, who played

a series of matches against each other throughout the country.

This year’s tour will also enable old team-mates to meet again—Payne, the 21-year-old Crystal Palace player, and A. W. Gowans, the Canterbury and New Zealand representative. They played in the same team while Gowans had a three-month trial with the London professional club last year.

Groomed For Future

Armfield, the former England captain, Hodgkinson, Eastham and Hateley will be the “veterans” of the team, while most of the others are young players being groomed for future England teams. It has been reported that the England team manager, Sir Alf Ramsey, had a big say in the selection, and that he has put forward the names of players who might make up the nucleus of England’s World Cup team in 1974. Joint managers of the team will be Messrs I. Robinson, chairman of the English F.A. under-23 committee, and J. Bowers, chairman of the F.A. amateur committee. Both are vice-presidents of the Football Association.