Personalities In Sport

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 393, 29 June 1928, Page 10

Personalities In Sport

The present Auckland Soccer Association's sole selector. Mr. Phil Neesham, as captain of the Auckland team in 1921, was the first to play a ball on Blanford Park (not the first to kick a ball, because Jim Downic and secretary • Peter” Dawson were seen down at the. park early in the morning initiating a couple of new balls); so that event alone, in a mild form, has a place in the history of the code’s headquarters in Auckland. Put apart from this, the prominent and active part which the popular Phil has taken in the development of the game in this city, if unfurled, would make a long and eventful story. It avus in 1920 that Phil landed in New Zealand from England, but it was not in Maoriland that he learned how to manipulate a round ball, for he knew his drill many years before, and it was only a very short time after he had landed here that he was marked as one of the finest players in the city. AN ARMY PLAYER Soccer was always his game, and it was at school, in the Homeland, that he acquired a solid ground-work in the sport, making a sufficiently good fist of things that when he joined the Army he became one of the crack players in various British regimental teams. It was in the Army that Phil first played big football, and it was then that he gained that thorough knowledge which has undoubtedly had much to> do with the improvement of the game in these parts. On settling down In Auckland he joined up with the Y.M.C.A. Football Club. He was appointed captain of the senior team. For two years he led the Y.M.C.A. seniors, and in 1923

“Phil” Neesham Is Popular Figure In Association Game

went over to the Ponsonbv Club. He took over the captaincy of the Ponies soon after his joining up with them. Up until 1926, when he gave the game best, the name of Neesham was a regular household word among Auckland Soccerites. In fact, it still is, and as selector he cuts quite a deal of ice. WEARS ALL BLACK JERSEY But apart from his fine record in club football Phil has enjoyed the glare of the limelight as a representative player. He has worn both the Auckland and New Zealand representative colours. The second season he was in New Zealand he captained the Auckland team, including the game against the visiting Australian team in 1921. Then, as a New Zealand representative, he played in two tests against the Chinese footballers, at Auckland and at Wellington. When Phil gave the game best in 1926, the officials of the code in Auckland were not allowing a level-headvd man who knew the finer points of the game from A to Z to disappear from the fold altogether. So they appointed him sole selector for Auckland, a position which he still holds. He was entrusted to a position which previously had never been left in the hands of one man, for he was the first sole selector in Auckland. Last season Phil managed the New Zealand team which met the Canadians. Now getting away from sport and on to business—Mr. Neesham joined up with the firm of Winstone’s, Ltd., Queen Street, when he first arrived in New Zealand, and to-day is in charge of the Customs department of that firm, and is as popular in business as he has always been in sport.