BELATED VICTORY

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31096, 27 June 1966, Page 15

BELATED VICTORY

Hat-Trick By Smythe The Canterbury under-18 soccer team overcame its first hurdle in this season’s Junior National Cup competition when it beat Nelson, 3-1, at English Park on Saturday. But it was an unimpressive performance by a team that never clicked. It was not until late in the second half that the Rangers centre-forward. A. Smythe, belatedly atoned for a half-a-dozen bad misses with two goals that made the match safe for Canterbury. It was to Smythe's credit that both were well taken, but Canterbury had such a superiority of possession that it ought to nave killed Nelson's hopes long before.

Many of the players forgot aE they had been taught, making the most elementary mistakes and making them repeatedly. There was the danger of defeat overhanging the sr'de when Nelson equalised in the second half but the Nelson forwards with the exception of the rightwing, M. Bedwell, were as unenterprising as their Canterbury counterparts. For Canterbury. the two players who did not let themselves down were D. Ph illl!ps, in goal ,and G. Davis, the right-back. Smythe, also, did his part with all three goals, and the right-wing, J. Mathias, made some good openings for his fellow forwards.

But Canterbury will have to play far better as a team and individually to win the trip to Australia at the end of the season to play in the interstate youth tournament—the pot of gold that goes to the winner of the Junior National Cun In another Junior National Cup match at Dunedin on Saturday, Otago outplayed Southland. 12-0.