rugby for Stewart

Press, 24 April 1980, Page 32

rugby for Stewart

By

KEVIN McMENAMIN

Although it will be some weeks yet before he is fit to play again, the All Black lock, Vance Stewart, has re-established contact with his Marist senior side. Stewart will act as forward coach for the next 10 weeks, filling in for Murray Giera, who left this week on a Rotary exchange scholarship to Britain. Des Hansen will continue to look after the backs.

Stewart said yesterday that the operation he had earlier this month on the knee he injured in Britain last year had gone as well as could have been expected. The damaged cartilage was beyond repair and had to be removed.

“I am still hobbling a bit, but the pain I was getting behinl the knee has gone and I hope to start running in about a week. Then it will simply be a matter of seeing how the knee reacts,” said Stewart.

• He said that the setback of having to have the operation had not dampened his enthusiasm to play first-class rugby this year and if he only got right for one game he would be satisfied, the game he has set his heart on being Canterbury’s scheduled Ranfurly Shield challenge.

In addition to the temporary loss of its chief coach, Marist is facing other, more serious, difficulties. Its star back, Paul Molloy, broke a finger last Saturday and he will be out of action for at least a month.

The injury is bad luck for Molloy, who was expected to make a strong bid for a place in the Canterbury team this year. He could still do so, but the enforced absence will

not help his prospects.

And Ossie McLean, who has served the team very competently at full-back for a number of years, will be leaving next month for Europe and he has no plans for an early return.

Happily for Marist it does have some useful back reserves, including the 1972 New Zealand colt, Michael Moore, and a strapping mid-field back in Mark Ryan, who represented South Canterbury last year. Ryan is expected to be Molloy’s replacement when Marist meets High School Old Boys in the main game of the third round of the C.S.B. Cup competition at Lancaster Park on Saturday. The High Schoo! Old Boys coach, Roley Manning, could be excused for wondering if his team is being made to pay dearly for its winning of the C.S.B. Trophy last winter. Old Boys have drawn top teams, Linwood, Belfast and Marist, in each of the first three rounds and the burden is not made any easier by having to play one of the mid-week games, against MerivalePapanui last evening, in the same period.