Soccer

The New Zealand soccer team added another good performance to their fine effort against Australia recently, when they defeated Luton Town this week. Once again Keith Nelson made the difference when he scored 2 goals. One suspects that the New Zealand side of 2 years ago would have lost this match because of their inability to take their goal scoring opportunities, but for the first time in New Zealand soccer, we have a genuine striker in Nelson.

Staying with soccer, one can't talk about sport this week without commenting on the FA Cup Final. Although feeling a little sorry for Liverpool, so close to their 'treble', I was delighted with the Uniteds win. This match certainly showed up the differing styles of the 2 teams. United reflects a European style of football more than the traditional English style, where they used massed defences, often not bothering to contest the battle for possession in the mid-field and rely on fast breakaways down each wing through the individual abilities of Steve Coppell and Gordon Hill. Liverpool on the other hand typified British football with the long slow build ups of their attack, strong mid-field players, and the running off of players like Keegan and Keighway.

I thought Liverpool probably did enough to win, but they spent so much of the time covering Coppell and Hill that they forgot the tenacity and skills of Stuart Pearson and Jimmy Greenhoff. In fact it it hadn't been for about 3 fractional off sides against Pearson, he may well have scored further goals. I thought that Stepney was value for money, particularly with his ability to avert trouble for United with his taking of high crosses from Heighway, Neal and Callaghan.

All in all it was a thoroughly enjoyable match, hard, fast and, and above all, incident free. If one was able to stay up until 4 in the morning, the crowds were good entertainment with their singing. It was somewhat ironic that United fans stole Liverpool theme song at the finish but that's football.

- Our man in the stands.