Soccer: Oceania delegate to push case for Kingz extension

Oceania soccer's new Fifa representative, Dr Mohammed Samud-Din Sahu Khan, has promised to do his utmost to ensure the Football Kingz team will continue to compete in the Australian National Soccer League.

Sahu Khan, of Fiji, who succeeded Charlie Dempsey in the position following last weekend's Oceania Football Confederation meeting in Sydney, said he fully understood how important the Kingz were, not only to New Zealand but also to the Oceania region.

Fifa, the sport's world governing body, granted the Kingz a two-year licence to compete in the NSL.

After one season, the Kingz now want that extended.

Sahu Khan's first test on behalf of Oceania will be to secure an extension at a Fifa executive meeting in Zurich on August 4.

"I know a lot about the Kingz' submission and I have also asked Mark Burgess [the New Zealand representative to the OFC] for a full brief and complete documentation by the end of this week," he said yesterday.

"As a lawyer, I wouldn't like to go and speak at the Fifa executive unless my facts and figures were correct," he said.

"I am taking my position extremely seriously."

"I want to be totally transparent as far as the Kingz issue is concerned."

He said he was aware that the Kingz chairman, Chris Turner, and the club's board wanted to brief him.

Sahu Khan, who is also the president of the Fiji Football Association, said he was prepared to travel to Auckland to discuss the issue with the board, which also includes new chief executive Simon Massey and Soccer New Zealand chief executive Bill MacGowan.

"I am absolutely committed to the Kingz and I will do my level best for them," he said.

As well as presenting the Kingz case at the executive meeting, he would brief executive members the night before.

"If I can present to the executive the benefits the island nations [outside New Zealand and Australia] will also gain from having the Kingz in the Australian competition, then I'm sure they will view the issue in a different light - very much along the lines of the Fifa motto 'for the good of the game."'

He said Burgess had said the Kingz were keen to identify young talent from other countries in the region, such as the Solomon Islands players they were looking at and already had in Bartram Suri.

Turner said he had every confidence in Sahu Khan's ability to present the Kingz' case

Meanwhile, Foreign Affairs Minister Phil Goff said the Government would consider "wider issues" in deciding whether to grant Sahu Khan a visa if he wanted to travel to New Zealand.

New Zealand has suspended sporting contacts with Fiji until the end of the year in protest against the removal of that country's elected Government.

Goff said that though the ban would generally include officials, Sahu Khan's election presented a difficulty in that it had been made by a "multilateral" group.

New Zealand would make a decision about granting a visa to Sahu Khan "after consideration of the wider issues, as well as the fact a member is Fijian."

Any ban would be contrary to New Zealand's interest in pushing the Kingz' case.

- NZPA