SEAPATT Championships: NZ Participates. So Does World Champion

Two men and two women from New Zealand played in the first ever international table tennis event limited to teams from South East Asia and Pacific Area (ie Oceania). It was competently hosted by Australia, played in Melbourne and the totally dominant Japanese team included reigning World Champion Nobuhiko Hasegawa. It was exalted company for New Zealand and Australia. As well as Japan there were teams from Indonesia, South Korea, Singapore, Thailand, Philippines and Malaysia.

New Zealander Roy Lea was on the elite panel of umpires chosen to control the team finals.

For the New Zealand teams, it was a disappointing tournament. Neti Traill had not yet launched her dramatic come-back (refer article below), and the selected players (Alan Tomlinson, Murray Borlase, Cathy Tadema [nee Johnson] and Dawn Wade) appeared to either lack motivation or were overawed by the occasion.

Both the men’s and women’s teams were beaten 3-0 by Australia and they lost all their other matches.

Team manager Alan McCallum noted the superior speed, fitness and ball control of the Asian players and his report urged NZTTA to yet again address the perennial question of how to lift the standard of play in New Zealand.

Back L/R: Dawn Wade, Murray Borlase, Cathy Tadema
Front: Alan Tomlinson, Alan McCallum (manager)

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Bryan Foster Wins The Treble

Bob Jackson did it in 1953. He was the first. Now, fifteen years later Bryan Foster emulated the feat by winning the men’s singles in all three national tournaments (NZ, North Island and South Island Championships).

Bryan had already won the national singles in 1966 but it was the North Island title that had frustratingly eluded him. He had reached the final no fewer than five times so his triumph this year was long overdue. In the South Island, by contrast, his dominance was undisputed. He won the title six times in a row from 1960 and was destined to win it twelve times in all over a nineteen year era from 1957 to 1975. By 2009 nobody else had come even close to that sort of achievement. Aaron Li would later win it six times between 1997 and 2003 and Neville Brightwell had already won it five times between 1949 and 1956.

Bryan Foster had further success in the Australian Open where he reached the semi-final in the singles and the doubles final with Australia’s Eugene Hermann.

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Canterbury Coach Goes Fact-Finding Overseas

Trevor Flint, a man whose coaching activities to this date had been confined mainly to the Canterbury area, burst into national prominence when he presented a proposal for a New Zealand-wide coaching structure to NZTTA officials. The plan was the result of his recently completed (and self-funded) tour of Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong and Australia. He observed coaching methods, visited universities in Japan to talk with coaching academics, and took great interest in the general attitudes of young players to their training regimes. His proposal back in New Zealand was to train pools of coaches at different levels, all using similar methods so players could ascend smoothly through the structure. He also advocated a higher standard of physical training, and more tournament play at school level.

In due course his proposal for a nationwide integrated coaching structure was adopted. He was later to be appointed New Zealand’s first National Director of Coaching.

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Australian Star of ’64 Returns – as Coach

The energetic and acrobatic crowd-pleaser who visited New Zealand as a member of the Australian team that blitzed New Zealand in three test matches and entertained thousands in provincial centres returned to New Zealand this year. But this time, as a coach. Murray Thomson, now the official Australian Coach (at the tender age of 23) was brought to New Zealand last year by a group of Associations covering the Franklin, Waikato, Bay of Plenty, Thames Valley areas (the so-called “Sutton Shield” Associations) and this same group also utilised his services this year.

The New Zealand Association saw the visit as an obvious opportunity to invite Murray to direct the national coaching schools in Cambridge (girls) and Palmerston North (boys) and he kindly obliged. NZTTA contributed to his travel costs to and from Australia.

He brought a new level of professionalism to the task – examining each stroke in a seamless combination of theory, demonstration and practice.

Earlier in the year he had coached the Australian team at the SEAPATT Championships where he gained knowledge from his conversations with Japanese coaches and by observing their methods.

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Northland Teams Reign Supreme

Travelling the greatest distance to compete in the Canterbury-hosted New Zealand Championships, the Northland teams also produced the greatest results. In a rare double for a provincial association, they won both the men’s and women’s A grade inter-association teams championships.

In the men’s competition, it was the first time in 25 years that any association other than Auckland, Wellington or Otago had triumphed. The Northland women, on the other hand, were winning their championship for the seventh time.

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Neti Traill Makes Impressive Comeback
Two members of New Zealand’s much-publicised world championships team of 1967 withdrew from top-level competitive play when the team returned home. One, Murray Dunn (then aged 31) called it a day after 13 years of international competition and three world championships. The other, Neti Traill (nee Davis) didn’t play at top level for the rest of last season and for the bulk of this season. She then staged a come-back and competed at the NZ Championships.

Playing as well as she ever has, she began by winning both her singles in the North Island / South Island contest. She then won all her singles in the A grade inter-association teams competition representing Northland. And to cap everything she won the singles, doubles and mixed doubles in the individual events. Her singles win was her seventh, and she had won the doubles events on multiple previous occasions as well. It brought her tally of individual New Zealand titles to 30. And she was still aged only 24. Her top-level career had another ten years to run.

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Australian Universities Visit

An Australian Universities team of five players spent a busy few weeks in New Zealand during their August vacation, playing NZ University teams, Association teams, and competing in the Universities Winter Tournament and in the NZ Championships. They were competitive against the individual University teams, winning three matches and losing two (to Otago and Auckland). They lost all six Association contests and to a combined NZ Universities team.

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Paddy O’Driscoll Dies

Mr C (Paddy) O’Driscoll, a Life Member of NZTTA since 1962, passed away on 2 September at the tragically early age of 68. He had served a term as New Zealand President in 1953. He was an active administrator for the Otago Association for three decades and one of their early Life Members, elected to that position in 1945.

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Another National Raffle – Bigger Profit

To boost funds for national development and overseas tours, another national raffle was conducted following the success of the first in 1966. The volume of tickets sold increased by nearly seven thousand to 65,288. District Associations benefitted by $3,241 and $2,009 was added to NZTTA’s development and tours fund.

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Tragic Death of Two Promising Juniors

Two Canterbury juniors were tragically drowned in a boating accident in North Canterbury on 17 February. One was John Flint, nephew of Trevor Flint whose coaching activities are featured in a previous article. The other was Kevin Ward, New Zealand’s top-ranked junior boy in 1967. He had won all three Under 18 titles at the 1967 North Island Championships.

Trophies were presented by Canterbury TTA in memory of the two boys.

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New Umpires Test Papers Issued

A revised version of both the written and practical Provincial Umpires test papers were issued this year.

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