‘‘It’s football!’’ he cries and reminds me that New Zealand Football runs the game not New Zealand Soccer.
He’s right, but then he never grew up in New Zealand in the 1950s when for at least 30 years the outfit had been called the New Zealand Soccer Association in spite of starting life as the New Zealand Football Association in the late 1880s.
It was as recently as 2007 that the name Football New Zealand was adopted for the national body and ‘‘soccer’’ was left to be used by old-timers like me.
Soccer in my boyhood appeared to be the sole preserve of ten-pound Poms who sounded like trade union secretaries and the Dutchmen who emigrated here in the 1950s. They seemed to be a breed apart.
I went to a school where rugby was compulsory and soccer was an alien code fit only for lesser athletes. A boy in my class was ridiculed when he brought a parental note requesting that he be excused rugby because it was far too rough and the boy wanted to play soccer for a club not connected with the school.
The history master countered with a reminder that the country’s first football fatality had been on the soccer field, not a rugby field.
In September 1891, Thomas Sibbon was killed while playing soccer in Auckland. Poor old Tom had played rugby for Auckland but had forsaken rugby for the less dangerous game of Association football.
However, in spite of Tom’s passing, soccer was flourishing. Dunedin in 1888 had two clubs, Northern and Southern, of which Northern has survived and has a strong claim to be the oldest football club in New Zealand. Roslyn Wakari also traces its beginnings to 1888.
In 1890 Otago played Canterbury at Lancaster Park, Christchurch in the first recorded provincial game — won by the home team 4-0.
In 1901, in the midst of a squabble over who was the country’s best team, this newspaper had no doubts: ‘‘The question which is upon the lips of every ‘soccer’ man one meets just now is, ‘who gets the shield — Otago or Wellington?’ We, of course, have no doubt about who deserves it, and our confidence will be fully justified when it is found that the New Zealand Council have awarded the honours to Otago.’’
A few years later the rival Evening Star was less enthusiastic about the game — ‘‘At present, ‘soccer’ matches are comparatively wild, meandering affairs, with no apparent sequence of events, and they don’t satisfy the intelligent spectator, who is not fed by his own enthusiasm. If brains begin to come in, it is safe to prophesy that interest will grow in proportion.’’
In 1904, New Zealand’s first ‘‘international’’ football match was played in Dunedin against New South Wales. New Zealand lost by the game’s only goal.
In 1923. Seacliff from Otago beat Wellington YMCA 4-0 to win the first Chatham Cup final, and Carisbrook hosted its first true international soccer game when a crowd of 10,000 saw New Zealand beat Australia 3-1.
By the mid-1920s there were about 6000 soccer players in New Zealand — spread amongst 460 clubs — but by the 1940s, rugby had become overwhelmingly the most popular winter game and soccer entered my boyhood era as poor relation, probably tainted by its reputation as a professional sport.
Soccer players seemed to be outsiders but today about 140,000 play, much the same figure as rugby.
From today, perhaps influenced by the struggling performances of the New Zealand women’s cricket team and the feeling that the All Blacks will also struggle during this year’s challenging test schedule, I’m turning my attention to the All Whites.
Of course, unlike the record-breaking numbers who watched the All Whites and Iran, I won’t be watching any games as I still can’t grasp those elements which one reporter has described as ‘‘innovation and flair, whether it’s a perfectly executed dribble, a stunning free-kick, or a clever tactical play, making it endlessly entertaining to watch.’’
Another wrote after the draw with Iran (which is more than Trump seems to have achieved): ‘‘At times it was the stuff that dreams are made of, the stuff that would have the boys of 1982 and 2010 on their feet and bursting with pride.’’
Perhaps, as a boy of the 1950s, it’s me who’s the outsider.
• Jim Sullivan is a Patearoa writer.
