BUT WHAT OF NEXT SEASON?

Evening Post, Volume CXIX, Issue 134, 8 June 1935, Page 22

BUT WHAT OF NEXT SEASON?

Wholesale transfers in the first few "open" weeks of the season have again upset several local teams. The closing of the transfer list last Wednesday will prevent further "poaching" and teams can now settle down to real combination without the fear that their carefully trained performers will be induced to leave them for another club.

One-team clubs are the worst offenders. An instance has come under notice in which five players from one of the First B Division clubs were approached to join another club. Their departure would have meant the breaking up of the senior team in one of the strongest clubs in New Zealand. How much longer will administrators of the game permit this to go on? The Auckland F.A. this season will not allow any club to enter unless with four teams, and these teams are to be maintained throughout the season. This is one of the finest rules yet to be put in operation, providing not only stability to the clubs, but a training ground for future senior players. As it is at present, one or two clubs are training all the players for the benefit of others, which run one or two teams, and then boast of how they won this or that championship or cup. With twenty clubs of. the calibre of Marist and Seatoun in the association there would be no fear of the game in the future,, : .

These two points." alone—that of transfers and the maintaining of at least four teams—would solve many problems that face dubs today.

"With twenty-four teams in the First Division," writes a correspondent, "divided into First A, B, and C (at present there are, nineteen clubs playing in the men's grades), and each of these clubs maintaining four teams in the lower grades, with preference for at least one junior team, to supply the necessary players for the first team from time to time, and two teams iii the boys' competitions, which at present embrace from fourth down to ninth grade, soccer would go ahead by leaps and bounds."

Next year the management committee of the W.F.A. should give serious

consideration to refusing to grant transfers after the first match,of the season, unless in,exceptional circumstances. ::.•.•.-■:' : : ■ '. ; ' ■• ;