Nine years' service in league administration

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32053, 30 July 1969, Page 15

Nine years' service in league administration

THE preference of a game of football to a painting chore served to reintroduce Mr D. G. Gaynor, the secretary of the Canterbury Rugby League, to the sport that has benefited greatly from his nine years as a provincial administrator.

Mr Gaynor was painting his parents* house when his step-brother offered him the chance of a game for the Dallington club. A schoolboy player with Woolston before serving with the Air Force in World War 11, Mr Gaynor set down his paint brush and went off to the game. His debut was quite notable. He scored three tries from full-back, playing in bare feet because his boots were too smalt After the match the opposing St Joseph’s coach, Mr N. J.

Fisher, protested that the name, Dave Gaynor, did not appear on the Dallington team-card. The referee, however, accepted the word of the team’s acting-coach that he had misunderstood his new player's surname.

Administration had attracted Mr Gaynor’s attention on a club and school boy provincial level well before he played his last match for Dallington in 1956. He

served for about 10 years as a committee member, secretary, treasurer and, in 1954, chairman of the club, and he was the first secretary of the Canterbury schoolboys’ board of control in 1950.

The Dallington club’s downfall was the over-eager-ness of a majority of its members to seek promotion to senior status. Although only the runner-up in the junior grade in 1958, it sought and was granted promotion against the advice of several of its more experienced officials, Mr Gaynor said.

A series of • big defeats led to players losing interest and the team was withdrawn from the competition. Mr Gaynor attended meetings to rejuvenate the club but the third grade team entered was also overwhelmed by its opponents and the players lost heart and incentive and the club became defunct.

In 1957 and 1958 Mr Gaynor was the secretary-

treasurer of the Canterbury Rugby League’s senior board of control He returned as treasurer in 1963 and is in his sixth year as secretary.

It did not take very long for the elements to provide Mr Gaynor with a major problem in his first year as a board member. Rain and flooding forced the cancellation of the two-day World Cup trials in May, 1957, and Mr Gaynor and his fellow board members had the unhappy experience of having to tell Kiwi aspirants from Wellington, Canterbury and the West Coast that they would have to return home without playing before the national selectors.

The introduction of semiprofessionalism to the code in this country was a progressive step in providing incentives for players to per. form well, Mr Gaynor said. There was little, if any, difference between an Artist or entertainer receiving payment for his talents and a sportsman being reimbursed on a monetary basis for his dedication and entertainment value, he said.

Mr Gaynor also visualises the code establishing a chartered club, similar to the proposed Auckland League’s Club, as a meeting place for sportsmen and an administrative headquarters for the code.

Rugby league has not been Mr Gaynor’s sole interest as an administrator. He is in his third year as chairman of the South New Brighton School’s committee after eight years as its secretary and was a scoutmaster in South Brighton for two years.

The Rugby league game has become almost a family affair in the Gaynor household. Two sons, Peter and Garry, represented Canterbury in the lower grades with Peter winning South Island under-15 selection in 1963, and Mrs Dawn Gaynor —“she deserves the honorarium,” said Mr Gaynor—assists with the family business while her husband handles the time-consum-ing problems of sporting and community service.