Soccer: Kings hold key to NZ's future

By Chris Rattue

It's nearly three years since the idea of the Kings - a New Zealand soccer team to play in the Australian national league - was born. Will it succeed or will the country's soccer bosses score another own goal?

THE SETTING

The Kings, a company formed by a small group of soccer people, have won entry into Australia's summer national league, called the Ericsson Cup.

New Zealand Soccer has endorsed their entry, subject to some conditions - mainly to do with financial viability - while the Kings and Soccer Australia lawyers are drawing up legal documents to confirm their participation.

Barring the arrival of any major last-minute hurdles, a professional soccer club based in Auckland will compete in an Australian league starting in October.

NEW ZEALAND SOCCER

They reckon the only reason you don't get knifed in the back in New Zealand soccer is because of all the axes embedded there already. A losing team is an unhappy team. And New Zealand soccer is losing.

A strong national league and a team in the World Cup finals are distant memories.

Inefficiency and petty arguing are two of the keys to this kingdom. There is the story of a New Zealand soccer boss who headed to England to find some opposition for the All Whites.

He parked up in a London hotel and rang a northern club.

"Love to," replied the groundsman, who ended up fielding the invitation to tour the colony.

Our fearless administrator headed home. Surprisingly, the tour never happened.

When the Health Council's Smokefree backing ended, so did the two-year-old summer league. They reckon it will be back, but then they reckoned that club from England was going to tour here as well.

NZS chief executives come and go, and debts are rumoured to be around $400,000. Then there's the world under-17 tournament which is/isn't going to be played in Christchurch.

Soccer is a major participation sport for youngsters. But when those kids become teenagers they find other pursuits and swear on oath to never attend a local football match.

All you hear about New Zealand soccer are their problems and the odd result of an All White game from the Outer Hebrides.

When they do play at home, it's obvious the coach has banned stringing more than three passes together.

Refereeeeee......okay, that one was a yellow-card foul. The All Whites do come up with the odd decent result. But who cares? It doesn't shape up when you've been watching Zola and Giggs on telly.

Chief executive Bob Patterson says a national summer league is a must, because rugby swamps publicity and television opportunities in winter. Many say that it can only be the Kings or a summer league, not both, which appears to be the only sticking point. An independent report on the Kings supplied to NZS this week is unlikely to raise major objection to the team.

THE KINGS

Nearly three years ago, a group of 10 got together and out of that, Football Kings Ltd was formed.

There were four directors.

* Chris Turner, an All White whose career was hit by a bad injury just before the 1982 World Cup. He coached Manurewa for three years. Turner is a salesman (he now owns a type of shopper-incentive card company) and acts as the Kings spokesman.

* Noel Barkley, an Irish youth player, useful All White, and successful businessman who founded Lifestyle Sports and co-owns ECM Music among other things. Barkley has recently resigned as a Kings director because of business commitments, but remains involved.

* Noel Robinson, former New Zealand Soccer chief executive who owns a company, Sports Management. A NZS councillor.

* John Batty, ex-Blockhouse Bay national league player, North Shore chairman, businessman, and father of All White goalkeeper and captain Jason Batty.

ERICSSON CUP

Australia's national league began in 1977 and now has 15 teams, with the latest additions being the Perth Glory and North Sydney Spirit, the two biggest crowd-pullers with average gates around 15,000. Other Sydney clubs pull in around 4000.

There is a six-team finals series - South Melbourne with All White Vaughan Coveny - are the champs.

Channel Seven has the 10-year rights to coverage, but has dumped most of the games on pay television, and farmed out one live game on Sunday to the ABC .
Ericsson has sponsored the competition, at more than $1m a season, for four years.

About 100 of Australia's top players, like Mark Bosnich, Harry Kewell and Mark Viduka, play in Europe, although more returned to Oz than left this season.

"The standard of the competition is at its lowest ever," says Sydney Morning Herald soccer writer Michael Cockerill.

About three-quarters of the clubs are in the red, as is Soccer Australia, which is down a couple of million.

AUSTRALIAN SOCCER

It has been rooted in the ethnic bases of teams like Marconi, an Italian Sydney club. SA has been trying to break that down. Previous chairman David Hill took the sledgehammer approach, threatening to throw out then champions Melbourne, Marconi and Sydney United in 1996 unless they scrapped their club logos which reflected their European origins.

The Melbourne club had already been forced to drop its Melbourne Croatia name.
Soccer bosses are now going for a more expansive approach, and believe the Kings can also widen the commercial appeal.

Ericsson Cup general manager Stefan Kamasz says: "It's important for soccer in Australia that the elite clubs aren't just promoted to a monocultural audience."
SA sees the Kings as the first step in getting teams from other countries, maybe Singapore and Fiji, into its league. It also wants to strengthen the Oceania confederation to a point where it can demand direct entry into the World Cup finals.

AUSTRALIAN REACTION

A majority of clubs apparently oppose the Kings. Some, like Perth, want SA's blueprint for the future revealed before the entry is decided. Others see the Kings threatening their existence. All clubs are on notice that they must be strong to be guaranteed a future place. One voice in support of the Kings is Marconi, the richest club, whose president, Tony Labbozzetta, is an influential voice.

SA's seven-man board knocked the Kings back twice, and were not unanimous when they decided to give the Kings an acceptance letter last year.

Some believe the Kings will strengthen the All Whites, and thus threaten Australia's World Cup hopes, but SA says if its side cannot win through on merit, they don't deserve to make the finals.

THE KINGS GAME PLAN

They have still to appoint a chief executive and big-club style manager. There will be a squad of 20, who can include up to five imports (players not eligible for the All Whites) for the first three years, and three after that. They will bring back top New Zealanders. Only about four current local players are likely to be in, plus three of the best juniors.

That could mean a mixture of professional and semi-professional players, earning maybe $20,000 to $100,000 a season each. (Four current Ericsson Cup clubs are fully professional).

North Harbour Stadium in Albany is the likely home ground (some games may be played out of Auckland), the annual budget is $2.5m, and unnamed backers are set up. The Tainui Trust was even rumoured to be involved.

The Kings name is not set in place - the Sydney basketball Kings will object, meaning an almost certain name change before a ball is kicked.

"We have no doubt at all about our financial viability," says Turner, who adds that getting television coverage is a key to their game plan.

The Kings will raise the profile and standards of players and offer them a better route to European contracts, he says.

SNZ will be offered one place on the board, and a legal document would specify the rules and links between the two. But the Kings are a completely separate business group from SNZ.

THE VERDICT

The Kings would seem to offer soccer in this country its best hope of a rosy future. There is some opposition in Auckland, and SNZ has hardly been overwhelming in its support. But the Kings are ready to take centre stage.

Pictured: Soccer NZ chief executive Bob Patterson (left) and national coach Ken Dugdale. HERALD PICTURE / RUSSELL SMITH