Soccer: Utting, 34, has lost that loving feeling

Michael Utting has called it quits and closed one of the more colourful chapters in New Zealand sport.

Utting, who played in goal for the All Whites in 20 internationals, will not play for Waikato FC in their remaining New Zealand Football Championship matches this season.

He has also made himself unavailable for future international selection and said "thanks, but no thanks" to the New Zealand Knights.

Any future football will, at most, be in a local winter league - possibly for Waitakere City.

"I still think I'm the best goalkeeper in the country," the 34-year-old Utting said yesterday. "But I have lost my love of the game.

"I would rather get out now than sometime in the future when people are saying you're not good enough."

Utting said he had been struggling with a groin injury all season and needed cortisone injections.

"James Pamment and Declan Edge, my coaches at Waikato, have been fantastic and I feel I'm letting them down but it would be silly to carry on when I'm not able to give 100 per cent.

"It hasn't been easy this year. I have just bought a new house at Muriwai. I was working for a scaffolding company in Mt Wellington and was driving to Hamilton each week for training," said Utting. "Not surprisingly, my form took a battering.

"Then, a couple of weeks ago, I got hit on the head by some steel and spent nine hours in hospital."

Utting's life has been a bit like that.

He began his career in Wellington with Miramar Rangers, played in the national league with them before going on to play for South Melbourne for a season and then in South Africa. He later returned to New Zealand and joined the Football Kingz.

A serious motor accident in 1995 left Utting with a broken neck and kept him out of the game for almost three years.

He fought back to fitness and won a second stint with the All Whites.

Utting played for New Zealand at Confederations Cup tournaments in Mexico and France but not without some controversy.

He was stood down for disciplinary reasons while in Mexico and later sent home from the All Whites hotel in Auckland and missed the 2002 Oceania Nations Cup.

That last incident led to the well-documented struggle Utting had with alcoholism and eventually the television documentary One for the Road.

Now, with a new job - doing a cadetship with paper manufacturer Paperlinx - new girlfriend Mary-Jane Richards and house and mortgage, Utting insists he is looking forward to life after football. With no regrets.