Sport in brief

Press, 13 December 1989, Page 50

Sport in brief

Soviet coach due Head coach of the Moscow Locomotive club Uri Semin Pavlovich is due here early next month to assist in New Zealand's preparations for the Kings Cup soccer tournament in Bangkok. New Zealand Football Association chairman Warwick Gendall said the Soviet Sports Commission (Gascomsport) had named Pavlovich to help the All Whites qualify for the 1992 Olympics and the 1994 World Cup. — PA. Turf experts called Turf consultants are to be used at the Basin Reserve to improve the cricket pitch. Wellington City Council s director of narks Mr Richard Nanson, said the council was working with the Wellington Cricket Association for the first time to improve the wicket. The pitch has already been criticised, one match into the first-class season. Many observers feared it would produce another series of dull draws like those endured during the past two summers. — PA. Aust. Games team Australian athletics officials yesterday named their biggest Commonwealth Games track and field team to compete in Auckland, but it may still be trimmed I by the Australian Commonwealth Games Association. Athletics Aus tralia nominated 85 athletes for the games, 15 mroe than its original request of 70 based on Australia s representation of 73 athletes at the Brisbane games in 1982. — NZPA. Discus player out The New Zealand women’s discus throwing chamion, Nerida Morris, has withdrawn from the Auckland Commonwealth Games because she objects to drug-testing procedures. The 24-year "'ld Aucklander is the second Kiwi to pull out Canterbury sv> ;nmer Anthony Beks quit recently for personal reasons. Per. onal reasons were also given by Morns when she told her national governing body, Athletics New Zealand — the new name for the New Zealand Amateur Athletic Association. Morris elaborated yesterday, saying: “I find the drug-testing procedures disgusting. I object to passing urine while being closely watched. It is an invasion of one’s privacy.” Morris said she had nothing to hide. — PA. Relegation promise Howard Kendall signed a three-year contract with the English first division soccer basement club, Manchester City, yesterday and promised a fight to the finish against relegation. “Manchester City are struggling to avoid relegation at the moment but don't count us out yet,” he said. The former Everton boss becomes City’s seventeenth post-War manager and the sixth in the last nine years. — NZPA-AFP. Bowlers down field New Zealand tenpin bowlers Karen Smith and Henry Leger are lying well down the field after four days of the world cup bowling event in Dublin yesterday. Smith is in thirty-first place from a women’s field of 38 competitors after six of the 18 rounds. She has averaged 162.33 points in each of her matches, with a best score of 183 in her sixth match. The women’s event is led by a Canadian bowler, Connie Gonsalves, who is averaging 220.17. — NZPA. Netballer leaving Margharet Matenga will end a 15-year association with netball in New Zealand when she returns to her native Cook Islands later this month. A shooter, Matenga was first chosen to play for New Zealand in 1978 and in subsequent years established a long partnership with Waikato’s Margaret Forsyth. — PA. Quarterback awarded NZPA-Reuter New York Andre Ware, the University of Houston’s creative quarterback, won the Heisman Trophy yesterday as the top college football player for 1989. Ware received 242 first place votes, 132 second place votes and 83 third place votes for 1073 points, 70 more than the runner-up, Anthony Thompson, a tailback for Indiana. The West Virgina quarterback, Major Harris, was ‘third. Notre Dame’s quarterback, Tony Rice, was fourth and the Colorado University quarterback, Darian Hagan, was fifth.