United coach issues point-by-point rebuttal

Press, 6 February 1982, Page 60

United coach issues point-by-point rebuttal

By

ALISTAIR ARMSTRONG

The Christchurch Mogal United soccer coach, Terry Conley, has issued a point-by-point rebuttal of criticism directed at himself and the club yesterday by a former player. lain Marshall, a New Zealand representative midfielder who earlier this week announced his intention to play for the national league side, Dunedin City, hit out at what he saw as the “dictatorial” attitude of Mr Conley. The coaching and administrative set-up at United had

prompted him to sign up for the. Dunedin club, he said, even though he would rather have played for a Christchuech team. United is Christchurch’s only national league side. Marshall said that the recent drift of Christchurch players to southern clubs was for similar reasons as his own. Much of Mr Marshall’s criticism, which appeared in a story in yesterday’s issue of “The Press,” centred on the suspension of himself and three colleagues by Mr Conley after a disciplinary mat-

ter in Gisborne before a match last August. In his reply, Mr Conley points to the fact that Marshall, and some of the other players moving, had been connected with United for a number of years, and “the coaching and administration at the club has been the same since I joined in 1971.” “The only thing that has changed is that certain players have got a bit too big for their boots,” he said. Referring to the suspensions of Marshall, Bobby Almond, lan Park and James Margaritis, Mr Conley said

those players had been “out of order” on that occasion: and their refusal to play in the Gisborne match (which left the Christchurch team two players short on the field) was “absolutely unforgivable,” he said. “They didn’t react well to what happened. “What they really wanted then was for the United management board to back them and not back me, but when the board refused to bend to this ‘player power’ they got really upset. They realised they had stepped

over the line and there was no way back for them.” ' Mr Conley said that the players’ fines had been deducted from their wages in any case, despite their protests. Commenting on Marshall’s allegation that the coach had “blown his cool” and not had the “guts” to back down, Mr Conley said he had thought about the matter at length, and only imposed the fine the next day. “The easiest thing in the world for me to have done about the noise that night was to have ignored it, and

let it go away,” said Mr Conley, “but in the long term, my authority would have gone completely.” Mr Conley said that the players who were moving their soccer allegiances to southern clubs were doing so mainly because they were getting paid for it: “That is the only different factor,” he said. And a statement by Marshall that an imported English player at United last year had been paid $l2OO a month net was “nonsense,” said Mr Conley. “The player that he is talking about came

out on a return ticket and wasn’t paid a cent by the club." The present United chairman, Derrick Mansbridge, replying to another statement made by the player, said: “lain Marshall may have intended it to be flattering, but that makes it no less ridiculous to suggest that if I had been chairman anything would have been done differently. Even a Solomon in the chair would have cwne to the same conclusion as the board of directors at that time.”