The Kiwi team under a different name

Press, 13 May 1981, Page 28

The Kiwi team under a different name

By

JOHN COFFEY

The top 26 rugby league players resident in New Zealand are to meet at the Show Grounds on May 23 in a match that will be billed as the final trial to select the Kiwi test team to meet France two weeks later. But the fixture will be a trial in name only. The fiveman New Zealand selection panel has made little attempt to disguise the fact that the game will be a warm-up for the shadow test line-up against the strongest opposition that can be mustered.

The New Zealand XIII is essentially that. Two forwards who last played for the Kiwis in Australia in 1978, Lyndsay Proctor and lan Bell, are virtually substituting for Mark Broadhurst and Mark Graham, respectively, and Dennis Williams has returned to take the stand-off position filled by Fred Ah Kuoi in Britain and France last year.

If Broadhurst, Graham and Ah Khoi — the three most effective members of the successful 1980 Kiwis — remain free from injuries, they will be brought back from Sydney for the French internationals. Proctor and Bell would have to produce mighty performances against The Rest to extend their test careers this season.

However, Williams has a much stronger case for increasing his total of test appearances beyond 30. He proved in the second game with Australia last winter that he is still very much up to the required standard, and has made it known that he is available for all levels of football.

It is most unlikely that Ah Kuoi would lose the stand-off half role that earned him so much acclaim in Britain and France, but Williams has had vast experience in the centres. With Olsen Filipaina not expected to be called home from Balmain, Williams could well be vying with his New Zealand XIII centres, Bernard Green and James Leuluai, for the two places in the test team.

National rugby league sides have been far more settled since regional selection panels were introduced. That has again been the case, and the composition of the trial sides was very predictable.

The panel has reinforced its opinion that the utility, Gary Prohm, is best suited to a wing assignment, and that Gary Kemble will be judged on his full-back capabilities rather than as a wing, where

he scored two tries for Auckland against South Island. Gordon Smith, Howie Tamati and Ricky Muru dropped out of contention through injury. The seasoned John Whittaker, who suffered food poisoning last Friday and had his appendix removed the next morning, was another late defection. The scrum-half role conti-

nues to cause concern because of the mishaps to Smith and Shane Varley, whose availability will not be known until three or four days before the trial. If both are ruled out, their respective successors for South Island and. Auckland, Wally Wilson and Brian Conning, will have a front-on tussle for test honours.

A number of younger candidates have emerged, probably with the 1982 tour to Australia in mind. David Campbell and Wayne Dwyer did not waste their first full matches for South Island at Auckland and obviously have bright futures in the code. The relative stability on the New Zealand rugby league scene — achieved in spite of transfer traumas and inevitable injuries — should ensure that New Zealand meets France with a team capable of continuing the Kiwis’ notable advance of the last 12 months.