GIBBS NOT TO GET HELP

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32072, 21 August 1969, Page 13

GIBBS NOT TO GET HELP

(New Zealand Press Association!

SYDNEY.

The English international, S. Gibbs, is unlikely now to play in the New Zealand table tennis championships in Auckland next week.

Told today that a New Zealand official would not provide him with assistance for air fares and accommodation, Gibbs said: “If that is their final word I doubt very much that I’ll be able to go.” He added that it was very difficult to raise his own fare and accommodation money. “It’s unfortunate. I would have gone if I had got some financial help." Gibbs, coach of the New South Wales Table Tennis Association, arived in Australia as an assisted migrant three weeks ago. Mr E. K. Smith, tournament manager for the New Zealand championships, said in Auckland that the organisers were not prepared to assist Gibbs to come to New Zealand. “Entries for the championships closed on July 1, and this fellow has had six weeks to decide what he is going to do,” said Mr Smith.

“He has had time to find out where he stands with the immigration authorities, and where he stands with the New Zealand and Auckland associations and if they were prepared to subsidise him.

“We have not heard from him. If we had we would have looked at his case. But at this

stage we are not prepared to do anything.”

Gibbs said he had not contacted New Zealand officials because he had been told, incorrectly as jt turned out, he could not leave Australia to visit New Zealand without paying the full cost of his passage from England to the immigration authorities.