A FORMALITY?

Press, 7 August 1976, Page 18

A FORMALITY?

By

JOHN COFFEY

Auckland rugby league officials and players are never lacking in confidence that they can comfortably deal with any provincial rivals, and results of recent matches with overseas opponents have deepened their belief that the capture of the 1976 national Rothmans title should be onlv a formality.

The British club champion. St Helens, was beaten by seven points last month, and, but for a dreadful 30 minutes of indecisive tackling and positioning last Sunday, Auckland would also have headed off the powerful Sydney side. Eastern suburbs.

There is no doubt that Auckland is entitled to firm favouritism for Rothmans victory, with oniy one cloud on its horizon. Keen interest is being taken in the southern semi-flnal between Canterbury' and West Coast at the Show Grounds this afternoon, for Auckland does not relish the prospect of having to break a series of three consecutive losses at Wingham Park, Greymouth, ft would prefer to have Canterbury lining up against it in the grand final next month. Rather surprisingly, the major culprits in leaving Eastern Suburbs sufficient leeway to take a 20-3 lead nst before the interval were the highly-rated Auckland and New Zealand mid-field backs. John Smith, Dennis Williams and Fred Ah Kuoi.

Smith, bv general agreement among experienced observers, has not progressed from his promising Kiwi debut last year and is still markedly inferior to Bob Jarvis in all-

round skills. Williams lacked control with his tactical kicking and aggravated Auckland’s problems by losing contact with the Kangaroo centres, John Brass and Mark Harris.

Later, however, Williams and Ah Kuoi combined in a passing bout of 80 metres for one of the most spectacular tries of the match, and they deserved some credit for assisting Auckland to share the 12 tries in the 26-22 result.

To be fair to the Auckland selector-coach. Bill Sorensen, snr, he did not have the services of all of his first-choice players for the game, which was billed as the “world club championship." Shane Dowsett is likely to be at scrum-half in place of Shane Varley when Auckland opposes Waikato in the northern semi-final on August 28, with Murray Eade and Tom Conroy in the pack instead of Ray Williams and Josh Liavaa. Lvndsay Proctor faces a tough time defending his prop position against Aibie Hansen.

One experiment of Sorensen’s which was more successful than many spectators expected was his reliance on the 19-year-old Ellerslie fullback, Gary Kemble, in preference to the former All Black, Joe Karam. Kemble had a most satisfactory initiation to firstclass football, providing the over-lap for Bill Sorensen, jnr, to touch down in the first minute, and tackling bravely.

It does seem unusual, though, that Karam—who would be welcomed with open arms in South Africa —should already have fallen out of favour.