Victorious hockey team will lose 10 of its players

Press, 29 October 1981, Page 40

Victorious hockey team will lose 10 of its players

By

KEVIN TUTTY

Ten of the 16 players in the New Zealand hockey team, which won the Junior World Cup Asian zone qualifying tournament in Hong Kong last Sunday, will be ineligible for the finals next August.

However, Trevor Blake, the team’s coach, can take some consolation from the fact that his opponents will be in a similar position. In fact New Zealand’s predicament is not too drastic said the manager of the team. Mr Ross Gillespie, after his return to Christchurch yesterday.

Included in the six who remain eligible are the captain and centre-half, Stewart Grimshaw, and in addition two players who were late withdrawals, Chris Leslie (Canterbury) and lan Woodley (South Canterbury), will still be within the age limit. That leaves half a team to fill, and Mr Blake believes there are enough talented young players around to adequately fill the positions, Mr Gillespie said. The ability of the team members to follow Mr Blake’s instructions played an important role in the team’s success.

“Because they were young they were more receptive to new ideas, and they carried

them out to the letter. It was a great team performance with all 16 players pulling their weight,” said Mr Gillespie. Several build-up games played by the team were also critical, he said. There were two in Auckland before the team left, two in China on difficult grounds, and two warm-up games in Hong

Kong on the Astroturf surface which none of the New Zealanders had experienced before. Against Australia, New Zealand was down 0-3 within 35 minutes, but there was no further score in two further spells of 25 minutes. Mr Gillespie was not surprised at the 0-5 loss to India in the first pool game. “No European team could have played well that day. The temperature was 32deg, and the humidity 90 per cent. It was the hottest October day for 25 years. “All the boys were distressed after the game. We

took pulse rates two hours after the game and not one was below 100."

New Zealand won the next two games (against Thailand and Hong Kong) comfortably, but even then Mr Gillespie admits he did not give the New Zealand side much chance of reaching the final, which it had to do to qualify for next year’s finals in Kuala Lumpur. After New Zealand beat Australia, 2-0, in the semifinals (with two apparently good goals disallowed) the first to congratulate Mr Gillespie was Mr Keith Murton, who was manager of the Australian team when it lost to New Zealand in the Montreal Olympic final in 1976. Mr Gillespie was then coach of the New Zealand team.

The umpiring standard at the tournament varied dramatically said Mr Gillespie. He considered — “and so did most at the tournament” — that New Zealand’s lan Faulkner was the best umpire. “He was earmarked for the final and semi-finals, but because we were involved he missed out.” Mr Gillespie said.