Soccer tour to start in Christchurch

Press, 2 April 1985, Page 48

Soccer tour to start in Christchurch

By

DAVID LEGGAT

Newcastle United, the English first division soccer club, will open a four-match tour of New Zealand with a match against the national team in Christchurch on May 18. Details of the tour were confirmed last night by the commercial director of the New Zealand Football Association, Mr Brian Cunningham. The other three matches will all be played under lights, against the All Whites. Newcastle will play the second match at the Basin Reserve on May 20,

the third will be at McLean Park, Napier, two nights later, with the final game set down for Bill McKinlay Park, the home of Masport Mount Wellington, on May 24.

Newcastle regained its first division place this season chiefly through the efforts of Kevin Keegan who ended his marvellous career by guiding the club out of the second division before retiring. The other two clubs to be promoted at the end of the 1983-84 season, Chelsea and Sheffield Wednesday, were

two of three clubs — the other being Leicester City — whose proposed tours of New Zealand this year were cancelled. Therefore, Mr Cunningham’s delight at wrapping up the Newcastle visit was understandable. “I am very relieved, and really it shows you have got to get these teams to sign contracts. You can’t look at verbal guarantees any more,” he said. Newcastle has informed the N.Z.F.A. that its full first team squad will be available for the tour, with the possible exception of

any players selected for England’s tour to Mexico early in June. The only players likely to be affected by that trip are the gifted strikers, Chris Waddle and Peter Beardsley. The Newcastle team will be managed by Jack Charlton, who visited New Zealand 10 years ago in charge of a Middlesborough team which gave a memorable display in beating Canterbury, 2-0, at English Park. Charlton, a key player in England’s World Cup win in 1966, has a reputation for

brooking no nonsense from his team.

The chances of Newcastle performing at less than 100 per cent, a charge which can fairly be levelled at certain teams to come to New Zealand in recent years, are very remote. Confirmation of the tour assures the New Zealand team of a solid buildup to its World Cup qualifying programme, which starts on September 21 with a game against Australia in Auckland.

A three-match series against Fiji, in New Zea-

land, is tentatively pencilled in for June, but still to be confirmed. In addition to the matches against the Keegan-led Claudelands Rovers in Hamilton on Easter Monday and the Canterbury invitation team at English Park on April 17, there are games under lights at Wanganui’s Cooks Gardens against the central region on May 29, and against Franklin and Auckland selections early in September. The Otago Football Association has asked for a match against New Zealand

in August The N.Z.F.A. has turned down the chance to host the Russian national team this year, and instead is looking at a three or four-match tour early in 1986. “We have assured the Rothmans League clubs that we won’t interfere with their programme,” said Mr Cunningham. “And, in any case, the offer came to us a bit late. But we do have to look at getting national teams here. After all, we are not the minnows we used to be.”