My life as a football hooligan

From Sitter! fanzine #45, September 2000

Football is internationally notorious for its fan hooliganism.

Hardly a major tournament passes anywhere without at least a minor sideline skirmish. But somehow this anti-social phenomenon has largely escaped the sleepy backwaters of the game here in New Zealand.

Indeed, it’s hard to recall any incident of note since “can man” ran onto the field in the 1981 World Cup qualifier against Kuwait and biffed a can of coke at the ref. (Okay, so this was written before car-door man struck at Ericsson.)

I mention this because for the national league final at North Harbour Stadium on September 3, 2000, I inadvertently became infamous as one of New Zealand soccer’s few dangerously unruly elements in seeking to get the best view of the one exciting moment in the dreadful national club championship final between University-Mt Wellington and Napier City Rovers.

The match was so poor, so boring, and so lacking in any redeeming features it deserves to be remembered forever as a very good example of how not to play the game. This was football as mogadon.

Its one redeeming feature was a penalty shootout at the end. I decided to stroll around the top walkway at the northern end of the stadium. In a ground built for 24,006, but hosting a meagre 1500 (tops), this did not seem like a big deal. But I hadn’t counted on the psychopathically intense security guards in a near-empty stadium.

Rugby fans have long referred to these guards as the North Harbour Nazis. I’d always preferred to give them the benefit of the doubt. But no sooner had I leaned against the fence — a good 30m from the actual field — than a security guard ordered us to leave.

Suddenly North Harbour Stadium was spurred into a major security alert. Why, we asked. “Because this is a restricted area,” a female guard answered. “There is no security here.”

We told her not to be so silly, and settled in to watch University Mt Wellington fluff its first penalty.

Using her walkie talkie the guard called for reinforcements to deal with this serious breach. They closed in from all sides and demanded we leave immediately.

“Piss off, mate,” said the bloke next to me as Napier took a 2-0 lead. We urged the guards to consider the absurdity of the situation considering the match was seconds from completion and there was new more security focused on us than the other 1488 at the stadium.

They said they weren’t prepared to discuss it. Within seconds their leader — a short squat Maori woman arrived on the scene.

She shouted at me that I must move and to emphasise the point, started bulldozing me with her not inconsiderable stomach.

“You are a very silly woman,” I said, holding my ground. She radioed to HQ warning she’d encountered resistance and verbal abuse. Flashpoint was occurring.

To assure her I was not seeking trouble I flashed her my International Federation of Journalists press card. With just two penalties remaining I figured it was a cunning delaying tactic to at least ward off another stomach assault.

It worked. She gleefully wrote down the details, and reported she had a positive ID on one of the hooligans. Meanwhile Napier netted their final penalty and it was all over.

However I have now been outed as a ringleader troublemaker. I await news of my banning from the ground.

I’d lost respect for security guards earlier in the day when I’d assisted two enthusiastic teenagers who’d also struck problems.

Guards wouldn’t let them into the stadium with their banner, because it was mounted on two bamboo poles. They also were considered a security risk.

It was the same pole-mounted banner the Bloc 23 Kingz Army had paraded at every Kingz home game last season.

But the chief gorilla at the gate basically lied. He told the kids it had always been their policy to ban such banners and it had never been in the ground before. Only security guards can lie with such certainty. I couldn’t believe my ears, and approached the security guard, again flashing a press card, and explaining I planned to do a story on their gate policy and apparent dishonesty.

I asked him if he would explain his position. He said no. I asked him if he would get his boss to do so. He said no. So I bowled on in and hunted down stadium manager Graham Running myself. I asked him to accompany me to the gate and decide for himself whether his security guards were being unnecessarily stupid.

Well, a curious thing happened when Running got within view of the gate. The guards suddenly reversed their non-negotiable stance and let the kids in, banner and all. There was no explanation to young Daniel Hart and his mate. Suddenly it was okay to take banners in.

So what is the policy?

‘Well, it’s tricky,” Running said. “We’re damned if we do, and damned if we don’t. But yes, sometimes the guards do get a bit over-zealous.”

Running defended the guards by saying the kids would never get their banner in, even without the poles, at Old Trafford.

True, but we’re hardly comparing apples with apples. And even at Old Trafford they don’t have psycho security guards standing on the pitch perimeter staring at the crowd for the duration of a match.

The bottom line is the security guards diminish the footballing experience at NHS. Wise heads will rightly point to the fact we’d never have had a car door incident at Ericsson with the North Harbour Nazis on duty. But I for one won’t miss them.

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Alert readers will recall how last issue — in the nicest possible way -  we questioned the selection of Bradley Scott in the All Whites Merdeka Cup squad. Select on form, we said. Such advice from media quarters probably looks a bit rich in light of Fred de Jong subsequently being awarded the New Zealand Soccer Media Player of the Year.

Nobody could complain if Ken Dugdale turned around and asked the media to justify this selection, because it’s far rougher than his call-up for big Brad - who subsequently did well in Singapore by all accounts.

Was Fred de Jong really New Zealand’s best player in the last -12 months? Do me a favour. There’s a certain romance attached to having an ageing warhorse continuing to foot it at top level. Fred Is a fine  role model, an identity on the domestic scene and a rarity as a player in that he has a fine grasp of the importance of the culture of football.

You’ll always see him at functions which support the game in a wider context, while he’s developing nicely as a TV and radIo comments man.

But was he better as a player than fellow finalists Ryan Nelsen and Harry Ngata, let alone the crop of current All Whites  such as (my pick) Simon Elliott? Fred himself was more than a little stunned to have won it (for the second time in three years, no less).

This award has been going for 31 years. It is one of the few constants on the New Zealand football scene. But it will lose its mana if the media continue to be careless in the manner they dish it out.

Fred, for all his virtues, was far from being the best player for the Kingz this year, let alone New Zealand.

It must be acknowledged the award has traditionally reflected form in the national league. Note that Wynton Rufer, good enough to be Oceania player of the century, has somehow never managed to be media player of the year (though he did win Personality of the Year in 1992).

But in this day and age, when New Zealand’s best players are increasingly spread over the globe, media need to spread their own horizons.

Having said that, I had less problem with Jeff Campbell (Kingz & University-Mt Wellington) winning Young Player ahead of UK apprentices Allan Pearce (Barnsley) and Chris Killen (Man City). Despite his diminutive size and 70s haircut, Campbell is emerging as a skilful playmaker, much in the tradition of Simon Elliott. In a few years he’ll have a senior player award to match. Unless the Auckland media contingent are still in love with Fred, of course.

Speaking of the awards, there is a bizarre irony in the New Zealand Soccer Media Association struggling for publicity for their awards.

The New Zealand Herald (which runs a full page on overseas soccer every Tuesday, remember) gave the awards evening three paragraphs in the briefs, and named “selected” award winners in its results section.

Auckland has long been a third-world region for soccer coverage for anything not labelled ‘final” or “international’, compared to metropolitan standards elsewhere, but there is a huge incongruity in most other papers backgrounding the awards better than in the Herald’s own backyard.

Still speaking of awards, did you see NZ Soccer gave Charlie Dempsey a “recognition award” at its annual bunfight?

Sure Charlie has done his bit for soccer here (yawn). But can you think of a more over-recognised person in the game here than Dempsey? He’s had just about every recognition going. Patron here, life member there, MBE this, CBE that. I tired of going to Dempsey benefit evenings years ago. In fact it’s only a couple of months ago we wished we didn’t recognise Dempsey at all.

Personally I can’t see the point in recognising people who have already been recognised to death. Particularly when the timing is as bad-taste as this one. Let’s try recognising some of the volunteer workers who have given their lives to making junior football tick and have never sucked free Guinness on a first-class flight to Zurich in their lives, let alone played golf on every continent.

There have been moves to recognise Dempsey in other circles. One suggestion made on the Goalnet internet mailing list was to have an annual award named after him. The Cock-Up of the Year. Of course, it would never work. Everyone would abstain from voting.

At least the minority of readers who think Dempsey has been villified too much will enjoy the latest issue of The Wave, journal of the Oceania Confederation.

This rag — from the Joseph Goebels school of publishing — appears to be the only football  publication in the world which has failed to acknowledge there has been a major earthquake on the landscape re South Africa missing out on the World Cup and Charlie exercising his famous abstention.

There’s obviously a parallel universe out there in deepest darkest Oceania, because despite the starring role of its former head honcho, this saga didn’t rate a mention.

Despite a stable of writers that includes Michael Cockerill from the Sydney Morning Herald, and Terry Maddaford of the New Zealand Herald, it seems The Wave couldn’t find a worthy angle to give its spin on this story. Hmmm.

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Put your hands over your eyes, turn the other way, pull up your collar or just cringe. Do what you will, but it’s hard to escape the fact Kevin Stratful is becoming an embarrassment to football.

Bad enough that our chairman should appear half pissed at his own NZ Soccer awards evening, forget when the national league season started, be hopelessly out of date in announcing the All Whites world ranking and mispronounce the names of the game’s hardest working servants (Jeremy Ruane as Jeremy Ruin doesn’t quite work, Kev).

However we’ll forgive him that. We all have bad nights. But when, as happened at the Chatham Cup presentation, Gormless Kev steps in, in front of television cameras, throws the traditional protocol of orderly presentation of awards out the window and hollers like an oaf: “come and get your prize, Napier” it’s time somebody told him to pull his head in, or at the very least, lay off the turps.

His predecessor Jock Irvine had his faults (see Sitter! Nos 15-33). But at least he had a sense of decorum. Leave the yobbo behaviour to the fanzine contributors, Kev.

Speaking or chairmen, is there some unwritten rule that says their traditional “chairman’s message” in grand final programmes must be totally empty bollocks? I’ve always wondered why talking heads never use the occasion to say something meaningful or informative rather than the usual patronising bullshit.

Could it be they really have nothing to say and are completely vacuous in their outlook on the game?

A word from Stratful on how the season had gone from his perspective might have been interesting (for starters he could have given us an update about all the sponsor dollars in his briefcase if only we adopted a federation structure) in either the Chatham Cup or Grand Final programmes which were typically dire.

The sad thing is our rich heritage of producing programmes will die if they can’t find anything interesting to put in them. Ads, results and team lists aren’t enough for punters shelling out $3 a time.

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Here’s a question which had been bugging me even before it became obvious controversial Kingz signing Julio Cuello ranks up there amongst the dodgiest of dodgy keepers. Why import a goalkeeper? If there is any position at which New Zealand produces heaps capable of playing at top level, it is goalkeeper. We get closer with keepers than any outfield spots.

From Ross Nicholson, Chris Marsh, Simon Eaddy, Michael lJtting, Hayden Englefield, Jason Batty, Steve Graham (though Peter Commandeur disagrees), Neil Mouncher, (throw in your own club’s keeper here) and — oh alright then, Napier fans, Mark Paston as well — we have some pretty reasonable talent.

So why on earth would the Kingz import a keeper. Let alone a teenage keeper. Let alone one who doesn’t speak a word of English, as is the case with Cuello.

The Kingz defence struggled enough last season with talkers like Ulting and Batty, let alone some youngster who will need an interpreter standing behind the goal.

To me this is the Rufers at their loopiest. To shaft Batty in favour of a kid they hadn’t seen not only made a mockery of their 18 months of platitudes about how the Kingz were here for the good of the New Zealand game, but once again highlighted the eccentric streak in the Kingz management.

If this kid is so good — and on his form in warm-up matches he is not very good — what on earth is a rising Argentinian star doing here in New Zealand. Ericsson is well off the beaten track for the Argies national selectors. And why hasn’t a top South American club snaffled him?

As for trying to make sense of Batty’s dumping, even if Cuello was the goods, why dump him as No 2? Why refuse to allow him to even train and prove himself? It’s inexcusable nonsense. To put this in perspective, here’s Wynton shortly after the signing of Michael Utting, September 29, 1999:

“Who would you pick? We are fortunate to have the No 1 and No 2 ranked keepers in New Zealand in the squad. It is unfortunate for Jason, but a lot of the best teams in the world have two good goalkeepers. You must also remember the season is long.”

Wise words, Wyrnton. Wise words. Rufer deserves to be put under as much scrutiny as Mark Todd. So go to it, all you media types. This, after all, truly is a curly one.

*********

I don’t think the All Whites got due recognition from their feat in winning the Merdeka Tournament.

It’s easy to belittle the achievement by pointing to the withdrawal of the African teams, and then the world rankings of Malaysia, and Oman.

Except that hardly takes into account the second-string squad Ken Dugdale cobbled together. (The fact the Kingz weren’t prepared to release Jason Batty looks pretty hollow now.) It was so young defender (and Sitterl correspondent) Sean Douglas pondered about taking a baby-sitting manual on tour with him, and he’s only 28.

This was a great achievement, particularly to go through the tournament without conceding a goal.

The squad were met at the airport by just one reporter — and he was more interested in a line on the Kingz’ selection antics. The NZPA angle on the win, carried in most New Zealand dailies, was nosed around the fact the All Whites were now “going into mothballs”.

Not an angle you often see with, say, the All Blacks after their season calendar has come to an end and they’ve just carried off first prize.

Anyway, well done to Ken Dugdale and the whole squad. As far as I can estimate, it’s the third-biggest monetary collect we’ve ever managed. Too bad we never got any television footage. The tournament really needed a golden goal cock-up didn’t it?

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Chris “Motormouth” Turner has the makings of a good commentator. He has breadth of significance as a former top player and administrator (and briefly as a coach). But he really must learn to pronounce people’s names correctly.

It’s inexcusable that he doesn’t know how to pronounce Urlovic (spoken Urlo-vich) considering Paul Urlovic is now at his own club. And we’ll leave it to Napier fans to pass judgement on Turner’s pronunciation of Martin Akers’ surname in the Chatham Cup final (he said Ackers as in hackers).

But his most gob-stopping verbals of recent times came at the NZ Soccer Media dinner when he paid tribute to the work of former fellow director John Batty — who was sitting a table away — for his efforts in helping make the Kingz a reality.

Batty is of course battling to get reimbursement for half a year’s work for the Kingz which has so far gone unpaid. The word is, the clubs legal strategy in refusing to cough up apparently revolves around alleging Batty didn’t perform up to expectations.

Batty’s company, Ay & Jay Ltd, has responded by seeking to put the Kingz into liquidation, with the case due to be heard in the Auckland High Court on October 12. In the circumstances Turner’s platitudes at the media dinner sound pretty hollow.

Football soap fans should enjoy watching this little legal shitfight unfold. My money’s on Batty.

The Napier-Dunedin semifinal “golden goal” debacle only served to remind me of the artificiality of playoffs for a league championship. We had a clearcut league winner in University-Mt Wellington. Over 18 matches, home and away, they were the best team. Champions. Why on earth would we need playoffs?

The common answer is it creates an end-of-season ‘spectacle” and sense of occasion for the punters. It gives us end-of-season excitement. Oh, and rugby and league do it. And it’s an excuse to get on tele.

Well, it hardly rates as a “spectacle” when so few fans can be bothered turning up, and their judgement is vindicated by the standard of play. I can only hope few people got to see it on tele, because it would have put promotion of the game back a decade.

You’ll note I’m trying hard here to make a case for the golden goal shambles to somehow become a reason to ditch playoffs altogether. Okay, so I’m drawing a long bow, but two finals in a week confused many people (on Lion Red Sports Cafe the rugbyheads called the NCC final the Chatham Cup final).

But for readers who want blood, yes, it was a cock-up worthy of the first inaugural Charlie Dempsey Award.

However it at least created media interest where otherwise there would have been none.

Witness how television ignored the semis first time around unti the controversy broke. At least TV3 went to the trouble of contacting Simon  Milton in Dunedin for some footage of the game.  TVNZ used old footage of Dunedin v Haswell to illustrate to illustrate its story.

NZS did the right thing in ordering a replay. Once the errors had been made, it was the best way to rectify things.

Incidentally, for people who like to compare the way things are compared to the way they were designed to be, in tidying some files the other day I noticed a New Zealand Soccer memo from April 26 1999, outlining the new structure for the game. It’s sobering to revisit some of the points made…

“There will be a new national league based on the restructuring of associations of which it is intended that a New Zealand development squad will participate in this competition. For the first time this league will be replicated to include a women’s national league if a major sponsor can be found…”

“The associations would be responsible for running their own competitions with the emphasis being placed on development of clubs so that the winners of each association championship will play off at the end of the season, to find a new Zealand club champion.

Eighteen months down the track we’ve seen nothing like that. Readers can make up their own minds on whether that is a good thing or not.