Dempsey: I had free hand

By TERRY MADDAFORD and WARREN GAMBLE

Charlie Dempsey insisted to a sceptical soccer world yesterday that he had been given a free hand to act in the best interests of Oceania before his World Cup no-vote.

Dempsey fronted up to representatives of German, British and New Zealand media in Auckland yesterday to claim that a majority of Oceania members had freed him from an earlier understanding to vote for South Africa once their first choice, England, had been eliminated.

Buoyed by that apparent endorsement, Dempsey abstained from the crucial third ballot, effectively handing the cup to Germany over South Africa.

His daughter, Josephine King, the confederation general secretary, and lawyer and friend Peter Clapshaw were at the 79-year-old's side as he crossed arms and looked down the camera barrels.

Josephine King claimed she had rung Oceania members in the days before last Thursday's vote and had received majority support for her father's voting freedom, but refused repeated questions to name the supporters.

She told the Herald later that she was prepared to swear an affidavit naming the six countries but only if they gave her permission to do so.

But last night on Holmes, Mark Burgess, New Zealand Soccer's Oceania representative, cast doubt on the version when he said he did not give King permission for her father to change his vote, instead asking that the status quo remain and Dempsey vote for South Africa.

A Holmes straw-poll of the 11 Oceania member associations showed the Cook Islands, Samoa, American Samoa and Vanuatu had allowed Dempsey to change his vote.

New Zealand, Australia, the Solomon Islands and Fiji said they had asked for Dempsey to keep the status quo and vote for South Africa.

The three remaining associations, Tahiti, Tonga and Fiji, were not contacted.

But King insisted again last night that she had received confirmation from six countries in the Oceania confederation and said she would swear an affidavit.

"My conscience is clear. I can categorically state that I have the six."

Dempsey read a prepared statement that contained little else new other than it had been made clear to him by "influential European interests" that if he cast his vote in favour of South Africa there would be repercussions for Oceania within soccer's administering body, Fifa.

Answering for her father about who those interests were, King indicated it was the powerful European body Uefa, which had helped the Oceania confederation greatly in the past.

Uefa has eight of the 24 votes on the Fifa executive committee, and cast them for Germany in the final ballot.

The contentious issue remains the Oceania "six" who ostensibly gave their support to Dempsey to vote whichever way he saw fit.

Dempsey is "quite certain" that if a second vote had been taken at the Oceania executive meeting in Apia last May after he was given - by a 7-5 majority - the go-ahead to vote for England until they were eliminated, Germany, not South Africa, would have been the executive's second choice.

If that vote had been taken, rather than an understanding to support South Africa, the soccer world might well have been spared the chaos they are now trying to deal with.

Dempsey revealed he had received an anonymous telephone call on the eve of the vote threatening that he would be in trouble unless he chose Germany. But he said what gave him a "real fright" was the fax slipped under his door offering bribes to vote for Germany.

"That night was a nightmare in my life," he said.

The fax has since been revealed as a hoax by a German satirical magazine, but Dempsey and Fifa vice-president David Will, to whom he handed it, both said it did not look like one in the early hours of Thursday.

Yesterday's press conference was panned by the British media, with the Daily Telegraph describing Dempsey as looking better suited to being at a concert with a blanket over his knees than voting on a venue for the 2006 World Cup.

A columnist said he conjured up a picture of "a bewildered pensioner better suited to the prom at Eastbourne with a blanket over his knees than the hellfire of international politics and the threat of German sausage."

But more seriously, columnist Sue Mott went on: "It matters not now whether the crucial factor in his abstention was a personal loathing of [Fifa president] Sepp Blatter (a club with many members), golfing partnership with [former German soccer legend] Franz Beckenbauer, antipathy to South Africa, alleged death threats or a yearning for the spoof-promised cuckoo clock.

"The fact is, he crumbled and succumbed to unknown pressures and now the wrath of New Zealand, Oceania, Africa and Fifa has descended upon him."

At the other end of the newspaper scale, the tabloid Sun headlined its story, "World Cup Charlie is a quitter" and said he failed to shed any fresh light on the threats that forced him to abstain.