Few soccer changes

Press, 22 February 1977, Page 30

Few soccer changes

Special correspondent Wellington Few changes will be seen on the soccer scene in New Zealand this year, after a negative annual meeting of I the New Zealand Football I Association at the w’eek-end. When it comes to the business of annual meetings, the New Zealand Football Association takes its biscuit, chews it a bit and spits it out still whole. This year’s meeting in Wellington was the lost meeting to end them all — the word “lost” was pencilled in against practically every remit on 114 agenda papers. With the promise of radical improvements in the last year — notably an enlarged Rothmans league and a rich increase in cash to sponsor it — the great expectations might have been thought to continue. Cynics would have said it was a forlorn hope. They were right. Three proposals to reshape the N.Z.F.A. administration format led the “nono” list. The McGuigan committee, under the eye of the last president and former Cabinet Minister, Tom McGuigan, was given the specific task last year of coming up with recommendations of streamlining policy-making areas. Its 11 members met six'

times, at a cost of $l2OO, 1 and produced a wordy re< port which, in essence, advo--1 cated a reduction of the / executive to seven plus one v representative from each of f the three regional leagues. 1; Delegates tossed it out I Keith Ross (Taranaki) put s up the idea of a three-man ■ executive, fuelling his argu--1 ment with a vehement ques- ■ tion: “Do you want to keep l an executive of nine who couldn’t care less what's 1 going on?” It, too, was 1 thrown out. Then the Auckland chair- ’ man, Charlie Dempsey, made ' his play on the con--1 stitutional confusion by sug. gesting a two-tier adminisI tration. It would work on the present executive-council *! set-up plus a new five-man I I team of “executive direc- ' tors” who would not be ’ directly responsibly to the ’ council and who would handle matters such as 1 tours and the direction of r the national side. Mr Dempsey, who hap- ’ pens to be soccer's tours ' chief, hinted this secondstage committee be based in Auckland, reinforced when • he had one of his cheeky ; digs at Wellington’s expense. “I really do believe that ■ one day soccer in this coun- : try can be run from here . . . >j "Meanwhile. Auckland has 1 a third of New Zealand’s ;lplayers and is still denied a Isay in the control of their t'affairs.”