Slip-up costs soccer place

Press, 3 August 1976, Page 36

Slip-up costs soccer place

By

BARNEY ZWARTZ

Inefficiency somewhere by someone has cost Trevor Reece, the dedicated Trans Tours United defender, a place in the New Zealand soccer team to visit Korea in September. It is understood Reece was selected for the team by the national coach, Barrie Truman, and his three co-selec-tors, but it was somehow thought he had yet to receive citizenship and was thus ineligible. In fact a letter from the Department of Internal Affairs was then on its way to Reece informing him he was eligible. The blunder — by whom it

is not known, although not Truman — has caused a furore in Christchurch soccer. It is tremendously bad luck for Reece, but most people feel it is the result of the inadequate selection methods. Reece is taking the affair philosophically, but his coach, Terry Conley, is furious.

“I feel the New Zealand Football Association is using this qualification rule to suit themselves. I very much doubt that Sam Malcolmson has been in the country three years, but his citizenship was pushed through and he was selected.

“The system is cock-eyed, there are too many inconsistencies. Truman has his hands tied, but it is sickening and the N.Z.F.A. is apparently showing a complete lack of consideration for the feelings of players,” Conley said. The questions of eligibility

and selection have long been controversial, and it is true there have been so many differing statements on eligibility that imported players have no idea where they stand. It is difficult to produce a better selection system, but it can not help that Truman is assisted by three regional selectors whose qualifications for picking international soccer sides are slim, to say the least.

Truman needs advisers, because he can not see every player himself, but the selection and checks up on availability and eligibility should be his responsibility alone. The eligibility system has been thrust upon the N.Z.F.A. by the fact that a player has to be a citizen to play in the World Cup, and citizenship is increasingly hard to come by. But the N.Z.F.A. certainly

seems to have been selective in those players whom it has asked the Department to rush through and those it has not.

Reece himself must be hurt and upset, and he is by no means the first to suffer under these antediluvian systems, but he regards it as just one of those things. “What else can I do? I am just taking it as it comes, but I am staying in New Zealand and will work to make the national side,” he said.

The situation is also very hard on Glen Dods, the 18-year-old Mount Wellington full-back who replaced Reece. It would be tragic if the knowledge that he was only second choice was to affect his tour, because he is an outstanding prospect.

The affair may have beneficial results in that the question may finally be cleared up, but something has to be done.