Garth Carsley Ballantyne
In September 2000, Garth Carsley Ballantyne became the 12th person to be inducted into the New Zealand Football Media Association's Hall of Fame. (Sitter! 43)
Garth Ballantyne was an extraordinary man who nurtured football in New Zealand despite not having played the game himself. Ballantyne started something in Auckland in 1924 which boosted football in many ways, some of them beyond his dreams.
When he began the socialist-based Comrades club in Freemans Bay it was for the boys and men of an area which was acknowledged as the city’s slum, full of mean alleys and dead-end streets, sly-grog dens and brothels, as well as the often dilapidated homes of the lower working class.
Garth’s ideals had been tested 10 years before when, following his mother’s example, he became a conscientious objector against joining the Great War (1914-18). He thought it was a war governed by arms manufacturers and not morals. (At the start of World War 2 he had no qualms about fighting the Nazis.)
Well off, and employed as a surveyor and city planner, he became the centre of a group of men who were trying to make a difference. The club was basic, the subs were cheap and for the next 30 years there was no set jersey, except for the top team in the years when the club gained senior status.
Members of the biggest club in the country had to provide their own shirts, any shade of green and any cut or style. No one seemed to mind. In the 1930’s, during the long depression, there was a small clubroom in Ponsonby Road where table tennis and snooker was played. The club was the centre of many a young man’s world.
But Garth found something else in the schoolboy ranks. Schools in the central area conceded that boys could play football for their schools, although suburban schools controlled by rugby headmasters, banned the game. North Shore, especially Devonport, was very strong in football because of the impact of so many Royal Navy men in the area.
There was virtually no coaching. Someone was usually there to manage the side on a Saturday but the boys found their own way to the Domain, Devonport, Victoria Park or Grey Lynn Park where there were few facilities and maybe only a cold tap. It was rare to see a parent as most fathers were working on Saturday morning and mothers had large families to attend to.
From club games there came the first representative team and Garth saw the potential. He threw himself into junior representative tournaments and his whole life revolved about club, Auckland Football Association administration and those rep teams, making sure that there were tournaments to attend.
A long-time resident of the then holiday beach area of Browns Bay, where he had a property with a tennis court, a pavilion and a house with bunkrooms, Garth hosted whole teams from his beloved club, or Auckland rep sides, for weekends and Christmas holiday camps. At peak times his large garage was also filled with young men, with Garth doing the cooking. And he paid the bills.
The beach experience was beyond the dreams of most visitors and changed the attitudes of most. They played football, table tennis and tennis, all day, every day. Garth allowed them to get on with it, never organising anything but letting the older lads take the lead. They often went on to be leaders and coaches themselves, having gained the confidence of their Mr Ballantyne.
The beach experiences went on for over thirty years. The house is still owned by the New York branch of the family.
The top men’s sides were never his deep interest, but the whole club celebrated when Comrades won the senior Auckland title in 1940 and 1941 and dedicated the win to their founder. It was really the start of the end as the players drifted off to the war and, on return, to a new world.
Not long after the war ended, Comrades started to fade away. But the impact of the club was just starting as the Freemans Bay area came under the wreckers’ hands. The faded buildings were falling down anyway, the alleys were rat-infested and the area was an embarrassment to the City Council.
Garth was in the Housing Department, planning the new Glen Innes, Tamaki, Mt Roskill and Orakei areas. As the old city area was demolished, the families shifted to the suburbs, taking their football with them.
The power shifted from city clubs such as Ponsonby, Thistle and Comrades and the new world of the game started.
Mt Wellington, Eden, Pt Chevalier, Avondale and Blockhouse Bay became the strongholds. Football was on the way.
So Garth lost his men to the new suburbs he had planned and the Comrades moved on. Diminished, Comrades became Grey Lynn-Comrades, then Western Springs, and now the club has a new home near the flying boat display area of MOTAT.
Later he was to be the chief planner for Newmarket Park, which would still be influential if not for the inadequate landfill which had been there for many years.
Ballantyne was not so keen on the older players and those who demanded fees or privileges for playing or coaching the game. He was the amateur, to the core, and the new world of football was disappointing for him.
But he still pursued representative play. The national tournaments then came under the control of the new national Junior Association he promoted. The new president bought a camper van and toured the country, promoting football everywhere. It is now played in areas such as Matamata, Waitara and other small towns where not even one team played in the early days of rugby domination.
It was a bachelor’s life of service after a period shattered by his stalwart opposition to war. The harsh and brutal punishments he endured, served to those who would not fight in the First World War, are recorded in history books.
He never spoke of those days again, except to state that it was futile when football chased an MBE for him in later years. He knew the information was on the Wanganui computer base.
But when he died he had earned five life memberships and was proud of his lifetime of sporting achievements. The club celebrated his 60th year as president, the first time that it had done so. It was almost too late.
Garth Ballantyne was born in 1896 and died in 1985, still a bachelor, married only to the game. He was one of the influential men in New Zealand football. Those who came under that influence changed the game even more.
# Others in the football Hall of Fame: John Adshead, Ken Armstrong, Barbara Cox, Tom Delahunty, Charlie Dempsey, Gwyn Evans, Kevin Fallon, Bert Ormond, Steve Sumner, Brian Turner, John Wrathall.
# By Trevor Rowse, President of the NZ Football Media Association, 2000.