Terry Maddaford: Soccer chiefs must tackle money-hungry players head-on

Money-hungry soccer players who are threatening the future of the game here must be met head-on by New Zealand Soccer bosses when they sit down this week to contemplate a second New Zealand Football Championship.

The soccer merry-go-round is in danger of lurching to a halt if drastic measures are not immediately put in place to end the crazy situation where our so-called better domestic players jump from one ride to another in a dollar frenzy.

Too many players lacing their boots in the Northern Premier League have come off a demanding inaugural NZFC season.

The results are obvious.

Tired, out of sorts (often injured) players contributing nothing for the few dollars poked in their pockets by clubs who, for some inexplicable reason, see it as a shot at some misguided glory. What glory?

The NZFC is, for the first three years at least, a closed shop. Winning the northern, central or southern league guarantees nothing apart from local bragging rights - certainly not prizemoney or a ticket to the big time.

Clubs - and not all, thankfully, are entrapped in this pay-to-play fiasco - would be better off putting their misguided money into junior or other development programmes to give their better players every opportunity.

Silly sums, as high as $200,000 in the north alone, are bandied about as the amount being paid to players regarded by some as little more than mercenaries.

Anyone watching the first few rounds of the Northern Premier League would acknowledge it has been quickly shown up for what it is - a B-grade competition in which too many worn-out players go through the motions in front of a handful of spectators at games which give the chance to wander down to a local club for a weekly chat and a beer with their mates.

But the players alone should not be singled out. The clubs that pay them should.

One player reportedly asked for $9000 to play for a northern premier club. It sent him packing, but within days he had been picked up - and surely been paid - by another.

He, like many, had dived straight from the high board, the NZFC, to the low board, regional league football, without a break.

In their meetings with the eight NZFC franchises, NZS bosses will quickly learn of the concerns.

There will be a push to extend the NZFC season to a point were it will overlap the regional leagues so much it will not be possible to play both. There will be a push for four rounds rather than three - 28 games plus play-offs, with no midweek games or weekend double-headers.

The franchises will also demand that they, in future, hold the players' registration.

In the inaugural NZFC, the players were registered at bona fide [winter] clubs and played for the franchises under loan deals on the understanding they would return after their championship season.

These clubs, understandably, wanted their players back as soon as possible with scant regard to the demands the NZFC had brought.

The NZFC was dubbed an elite competition but it is in danger of falling well short of that when the players turn up for a third back-to-back season in October just a few weeks after regional/Chatham Cup football is over.

As an amateur competition, there is no provision for player payments by NZFC franchises. Therein lies the problem. Players with inflated ideas of their worth will chase whatever money is flashed at them.

The results are painfully obvious. There needs to be some tough talking from the top if our best players are to have their playing careers successfully managed.

There is no hope of a player going around week after week in a regional league team then stepping up to play for the All Whites, as a handful of players in the just-named 30-player squad could be asked to do.

The NZFC has set a benchmark.

New Zealand Soccer must ensure it meets it.