Coach backs Fallon

Press, 30 March 1989, Page 18

Coach backs Fallon

PA Wellington A respected soccer coach, Barrie Truman, supports the former national coach, Kevin Fallon, in his criticism of current team boss John Adshead’s selections for the disastrous World Cup match against Australia earlier this month.

Mr Fallon, who resigned as 'New Zealand coach late last year, attacked Mr Adshead’s team and tactics in two Sunday newspaper articles on March 19. New Zealand tumbled to a 4-1 defeat .in Sydney on March 12, after earlier going down 1-0 to Israel in Tel Aviv. Mr Fallon, who had been Mr Adshead’s right hand man when they took the All Whites to the World Cup finals in Spain seven years ago, said Mr Adshead had picked several players he (Fallon) had found wanting at international level.

Mr Truman, a former New Zealand coach and long time national league coach with Wellington, supported Mr Fallon’s criticisms — although questioning whether he was the right man to make them. “You’ve got to realise here was a coach (Fallon) who had kept Australia within credible distance for three or four years, without really having a bad result. “Within one game the whole credibility went in one fell swoop.

“As far as I am concerned the points he raised made a lot of sense. Any coach worth his salt would have said what he did. But perhaps what he said should have come from someone else.

“It’s all right saying we shouldn’t rock the boat and New Zealand soccer doesn’t need this sort of thing but the points he made were valid,” Mr Truman said.

Mr Adshead controversially omitted his Sydney-based New Zealand players — Mike McGarry, Robert Ironside, Billy Wright and Fred de Jong — from the side which went down to Australia. Mr Truman believed a coach had to stand up and take criticism when decisions he had taken did not come off. “He (Adshead) has got to face the fact that his decisions didn’t work for him. John added two and two and got five.”