All Whites “20 Years On” dinner

Celebrating 1982's Road to Spain... From Sitter! #53, 2002

What a great speaker John Adshead is. I was reminded of the fact when he stole the show at the “20 Years On” celebration dinner for the 1982 All Whites as North Harbour on June 15.

Dynamic, forceful, dramatic, eloquent, polished. That was Adshead as he shared a few anecdotes from the glory days.

In his best yarn, Adshead explained how boredom was the biggest problem when the team was in camp for weeks on end.

To counter it, they formed a “variety club” in which all players and management, working alone or in groups of 4-6, had to produce concert items. Richard Wilson did his Rolf Harris impressions. Grant Turner and Adrian Elrick engineered a subtle approach to childbirth, Steve Sumner was the Elephant Man (don’t ask) and Bobby Almond and Steve Wooddin were “Bust ‘Em and Balls” – a takeoff of television culinary maestros Hudson and Hall.

But most memorable was Keith “Buzzer” Mackay, one of the great solo artists of our time with his magic sausages. The Amazing Mackay would take the stage magician-style and peel the wrapping off a pack of sausages, and shuffle them as if they were a pack of cards. With audience assistance he would go through the patter.

“Take a sausage, look at it, remember it, and put it back in the bag.”

Having done so, Mckay duly extracted a banger from the “pack” and inquired of his helper: “Is this your sausage? Brought the house down, by all accounts.

Such anecdotes only reinforce the feeling the real story of our qualification for Spain has never been told. Despite Armin Lindenburg’s excellent “Adshead and Fallon -- The Inside Story” and the even better “The Impossible Dream” by Ian Garner and Ian Walter, you get the feeling there’s plenty more to be written yet.

As well as the players, you’d have to say the evening also belonged to the entreprenurial types who spent the evening getting signatures of as many of the Class of 82 as possible.

Football people have always been notorious in taking advantage of anything which even slightly resembles a freebie and it was entirely predictable that the display-only balls and boots which were placed on the tables to embellish the soccer atmosphere were quickly acquired by the Arthur Daley elements, who often then collected signatures on them.

One woman had the nerve to come to our table (Sitter! folk are givers, not takers) and ask if she could please have the size seven boot in the centre because it was just her son’s size she already had collected the right-foot one from another table.

Hmmm. There are times that we have no class at all in New Zealand football. All the same, you couldn’t help but laugh when organisers took to the microphone to appeal to punters to leave the display goods alone. I’m not sure quite what this says about the character of us football punters.

Most of the players look like they are still in rude health and capable of playing a good 90 minutes. Indeed, Ken Cresswell is still playing at federation premier level in Wellington.

Around 1500 turned up in the afternoon to watch the 82 All Whites beat a celebrity XI 3-2 in a match played over three 20 minute spells. Frank Van Hattum was playing outfield and scored for the 82 All Whites whilst Matthew Ridge scored for the invitation side.

It was great to see a video sequence of the 81/82 WC campaign using the old Ray Wolff song Heading for the Top and We’re the All Whites as backing music during the evening. The crowd erupted with each goal, just as they might have 20 years ago.

Founding Sitter! editor Derek Walker used the occasion to add extra signatures to an All Whites shirt which now has over 60 former NZ internationals on it.

It was fitting that the whole squad was inducted into the New Zealand Football Media Hall of Fame, even those who couldn’t be arsed to attend. On that count, it was disappointing Wynton Rufer didn’t front, considering his profile in the greater scheme of things. He said he had a long-standing coaching commitment in Marlborough. Hell, we’d have shouted him a return flight to Blenheim for the night if his coaching session there was that critical and his budget that tight.

If there was a criticism of the evening, it was that the flow was completely lost by the now-obligatory sports memorabilia auction in the middle of it. To be fair, $25,000 was raised for Child Cancer research and for junior development in the northern two federations.

Apparently there is some unwritten rule you can’t hold a celebration dinner these days without calling in an auctioneer. Among the items to go were the ball with which the All Whites beat Fiji 13-0. It went to Adshead for $3000, after he held his nerve once he found himself in a dogged bidding war with Sitter! deputy Grant Stantiall.

A succession of signed shirts, and paraphernalia from other codes – all chance-of-a-lifetime stuff, we were assured – raised good money, but it quickly became yawn-a-minute stuff, even for keen anoraks like me.

The link with the prime purpose of the evening became more and more tenuous, until it reached absurdity with the auction of a 1993 Toyota Levin. Call me old fashioned, but who in their right mind goes out to a $100-a-head dinner and starts bidding for an ageing Jap import? Quite a lot of people, actually, but that’s another story.

The most pleasing aspect of the evening was the fact that over 600 people turned out for what was a pricey but classy night out. It was a slick, well-run evening, presented complete with souvenir publication, multi-media displays and a stunning collection of Richard Wilson’s artwork.

It shows it is possible to run top-of-the-market football dos, even if the punters do have a tendency to nick things.