Kevin Towns still hopes to coach N.Z. hockey team

Press, 3 December 1987, Page 52

Kevin Towns still hopes to coach N.Z. hockey team

By

KEVIN TUTTY

Kevin Towns, who withdrew as manager of the New Zealand hockey team two weeks ago, would still like to coach the national team, a position for which he was apparently being groomed.

But he believes the New Zealand Hockey Association has placed itself in a position where it will have to sacrifice either himself or the new assistant-coach, Alwyn Riggs, next February. Mr Towns was manager of the New Zealand team at the World Cup last year and in two international series this year. He was widely regarded as the person to take the reins from Trevor Blake, the present national coach, when his term ended.

Earlier this year, Mr Blake was appointed until after the Seoul Olympics next year, but with New Zealand’s exclusion from the Olympics in October, Mr Towns felt the time was right, with an approaching tour to India in January, to appoint an assistant-coach, who could begin building a team which might lift New Zealand's ranking.

Mr Towns withdrew from contention for the manager’s job to India and criticised the

national association’s lack of foresight.

His comments forced an incommittee discussion at the N.Z.H.A. annual meeting last week-end in Wellington, and the upshot was the appointment of Mr Riggs as assist-ant-coach.

Mr Towns expects that he will be available when the coach’s position is considered in February. (Mr Blake has agreed to step down after the tour to India.)

However, Mr Riggs is also sure to be nominated for the position, so one of the men will have to be sacrificed.

Mr Towns said yesterday he did not want to form a rift between the national association and himself, and his comments about a lack of planning of the national team’s international future had in no way been a criticism of Mr Blake, the national coach.

“I was not saying that Trevor (Blake) should retire, but that an assistant-coach should be appointed to allow that person to begin team building as soon as possible.”

When the assistant-coach’s position was discussed at the week-end, Mr Towns was not considered, said the chairman of the N.Z.H.A., Dr

Bruce Penfold. In a letter to the association, Mr Towns had said he was unsure of his future position because of work commitments.

Yesterday, however, Mr Towns said that at no stage had he indicated he would be “totally unavailable.” Mr Towns said it was imperative that the person to replace Mr Blake be appointed as soon as possible. An extended national squad of 30 players has been selected for a coaching weekend next April, but Mr Towns said that if he was the national coach he might want other players in the squad. “I have my own ideas on how to form a squad. I would like to put some young players of 18 or 19 in the squad and persevere with them. It might take a couple

of years for them to earn a place in the national squad, but that’s what the Australians do,” Mr Towns said.

“People forget that New best players in the past — Ramesh Patel, Jeff Archibald, Selwyn and Barry Maister, John Christen, Arthur Parkin, Alan Mclntyre — were all teenagers when they first played, for New Zealand,” he said. The first major task for the new coach will be to ensure New Zealand finishes in the first five at the Inter-Contin-ental Cup in the United States in 1989.

That will qualify the team for the World Cup in Pakistan in 1990, and a place in the top six at that tournament will qualify New Zealand for the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona.