Wednesday, July 25th 1973

Ngaruawahia Soccer

Fourth Division “Green”

Ngaruawahia Green met Hamilton at home on Saturday. The score ended up 6-3 to Hamilton with Geoff McLaughlin (2) and Danny Duffull netting for Ngaruawahia. With the wind at their backs, Green had the Hamilton defence and many of their forwards pinned in the Hamilton half. Stephen George, playing at centre-forward, was always on the lookout for loose balls from the Hamilton defence, and Geoffrey McLaughlin came through on attack often. The half-time score was 2-1 to Hamilton and the Green players were, at that point, well pleased with their performance.

Tiring more rapidly than their larger opponents, Green did well to restrict Hamilton to only four wind-assisted goals while slamming in two of their own in the second half.

Fourth Division “Red”

Ngaruawahia Red only managed to field seven players against Wanderers at Hamilton to go down 17-1. The team that turned up were not slow to show their disappointment over their team-mates who had decided to “give it a miss” that Saturday. Danny Duffull scored for Red.

Second Division

Ngaruawahia had a bye last Saturday and had arranged a match against the Waikato University Cricket Club. Ngaruawahia made the most of this match to completely re-arrange their team. Rex Nightingale moved out of goal to play in the forwards and several new members had a full game.

No goals came forth in the match although George Sunnex managed to curl one into the net from near the corner flag but the ball was ruled over the line at the corner after persuasion by the Varsity players towards the referee. Ngaruawahia players were cautious in their tackles and in being tackled as no-one wanted to risk injury in the friendly game. Deliberate foul tackles from Varsity were unheeded by the ref. even though he acknowledged them, so Ngaruawahia kept clear of such tacklers. Ian Todd had a quiet game in goal and even roamed down to the halfway line to help out in attack.