Auckland Wants Club Soccer

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31094, 24 June 1966, Page 12

Auckland Wants Club Soccer

"The Press” Special Service

WELLINGTON

Auckland would not join a national soccer league unless the teams competing were club sides, said Mr P. Graham, at last evening’s meeting of the New Zealand Football Association executive.

Mr Graham, who returned from Auckland on Saturday after discussions with the chairman of the Auckland Football Association (Mr D. Mills) and the chairmen of the Auckland clubs, said that Auckland wanted nothing to do with a national league based on provincial teams. “There is little chance of shifting their opinion on this, either,” he said. Mr Graham’s report on Auckland’s stand on the provincial league virtually destroys any hope the national body had of forming a fourassociation competition at the end of the 1967 season.

The N.Z.F.A. proposal was that Wellington, Canterbury, Auckland and Otago would play a six-game, home-and-away competition at the end of next season.

Otago agreed to join the league if the teams were club sides, while Wellington and Canterbury wanted to play their representative sides in the competition. Tour Cancelled

Stirling Albion, the Scottish first division football side, will not play in New Zealand when it has completed its tour of Japan. The chairman of the tours committee (Mr C. R. Wilkins) said that the Scottish team had been unable to arrange games in Australia, and so were prevented from coming to this country.