Best player never to play for AWs

He didn't play against Dunfermline or something like that?

How about David Batty for this list?

I reckon there are quite a few who should have been selected.

Ray Veall, Frank Madrussan and John Warrington are three that spring to mind.

Leggy, did Gary Lake ever get an AWs cap? He was a handy fullback. And I always liked Rueben Milner when I saw him play for Suburbs, very tidy with the ball.

Gary did play left back for the AW's.  Rueben Milner was OK at Suburbs but when he transferred to Courier Rangers he was probably  one of the standout players. I think the main reason for that was the players were of a higher calibre.

Andy Polyansky. Was invited to the UK to try his luck by none other than Tom Finney (according to historical sources, i.e. one of his Hungaria team mates)  but declined. Lotsy had more tricks and knew all the triangles, but Andy was the goods in front of goal. Deadly.

I loved watching Hungaria in those days

                                         ?

Brian Willman  Joe Benzcik    Attilla Varga   Micky Sikszai

                            Graeme McDowall

                 Lotsy Polyansky          Imre Kiss

Julius Beck            Andy Polyansky             Steve Nemet

Best team ever played in Wellington - briefly. When fit. When sober.

They did enjoy their grog. LOL

Morning after the night celebrating their win over North Shore at Carlaw Park, which gained them entry to the Nat League, 'giant' Joe Benzcik was found lying naked and fast asleep on a hotel mattress on Grafton Bridge. Put there by Lotsy and Julius B I believe.

Archie Thompson? 

Julius Beck was a lovely footballer to watch. I could have watched him play for hours on end.

He played for the AW's though  JV.

It was just side commentary when I saw his name mentioned Leggy

Presented me with a cup once. Top goalscorer Under-14's.

I'm going to look closer to this millennium and say Daniel Lins Cortes 

With all due respect, I don't think so.

Kiss, Beck and Nemet all played for NZ in the 1960's (Kiss one cap, Beck one cap, Nemet four caps)

Nemet was a former Yugoslavia youth international.

Billy Walsh who was probably the most high-profile player to immigrate to NZ - former Man City and Ireland midfielder who came out around the same time as Ken Armstrong in the 1950's: 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Walsh_(Irish_fo...

Played for Eastern Suburbs and the Auckland rep team, including a famous 3-0 thrashing of Austrian champs FK Austria, the best Austrian team of the twentieth century, in 1957:

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/soccer-football/news/art...

Did turn out for NZ in an unofficial match vs. an English FA XI. Not a cap though.

Former Manchester City player 1938 - 1950 and international for both Republic and Northern Ireland.

A very high-profile player, he played for the Republic side that defeated England 2-0  at Goodison Park in 1949, becoming the first non-British team to beat England at home:

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/England_v_Ireland_(19...

Video of Ireland v England 1949:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gY5i1NBBxzU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1b-SHCUSP0

English embarrassment lead to propaganda for decades that the defeat vs. Hungary in 1953 was "the first defeat on home soil." Most records have been corrected now.

Billy Walsh's ashes are interred at the Garden of Remembrance at the City of Manchester Stadium.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

As a teenager in Nelson in the early 1980's I used to enjoy watching English immigrant Paul Cunningham (?), an elegant technically-gifted midfielder who won the Central League with Nelson United in 1982 and then played Rothmans National League for a few seasons for Nelson.

Unusually for a footballer, Paul was also a business executive  - he lived in Nelson but flew across Cook Strait to work in Wellington.

Probably Nelson's most skillful player of the 1980's (apart from any short-term imports). 

^ I think Andy Polyansky may have played for NZ in that (unofficial) NZ team v FA X1 too, otherwise how did he get noted by Tom Finney? So with Kiss, Beck & Nemet, that would make four Hungaria players from the one team who played for NZ one way or another. And I suspect Lotsy P must have come very close if not actually playing. If so then the whole front 5. But was before my time.

And the 18 yr old Kiwi kid from J'ville who replaced the aging Andy Polyansky in the above line-up, Steve Boyland, also went on to play for the All Whites (1 game, v Iran).

English embarrassment lead to propaganda for decades that the defeat vs. Hungary in 1953 was "the first defeat on home soil." Most records have been corrected now.

Think you are overstating things using the term ' propaganda'  Big Pete: most of the Irish players were playing in the football league, and were seen to be 'local' or dare I say it, 'almost British'. Some of them played for Northern Ireland in 1946(7-2 to England) and then represented The Irish Republic in a 1-0 loss against England only a week or so later. They certainly weren't considered to be 'continental' opposition back in 1949, and this is apparent in the fact they had good crowd support in the England game(played at Goodison Park, and in a city sometimes called 'the capital of Ireland'!). Hungary were always referred to as the first CONTINENTAL team to win on English soil, which is factually incorrect, but only really due to the vexing question of Ireland's place in British history. 

Levi Hanssen, NZ born player, plays in Iceland for HB Torshavn.

27 year old

Can't play for NZ anymore because he played for Iceland in a World cup qualifier. 

Hey Big Pete, do you remember a very young Nelson united player in the 80's  - Kelvin Atikinson, a centre back?  I think he played for NZ under 19s or something, and then had his knee wrecked at 19 and never played again.  He was amazing.  The only centre back ever saw man marked.  I think Kelvin fits into the "what if" category....

Leggy, how about from your time? especially if there is some hot [by now tepid] gossip involved....

double post

NP, nothing hot, but I have mentioned this guy before. John Warringtom, a truly classy player.

I vaguely recall that name

Played for Gisborne  City in the 70's.

http://photonews.org.nz/gisborne/issue/GPN238_1974...

Some great photos here, look at the crouds

It was magic.

I mentioned way earlier in this thread that Neil Woodhams would be one of my picks. Still would. As for older players back around Leggy's playing time, Keith Bowley at Gisborne (who is in trhe article linked above) was a great 'keeper but around at the time of Praven Jeram, Kevin Curtin, Owen Nutteridge and a young Richard Wilson.The halcyon days of NZ goalkeeping.

On another note, I was at Ken Fleet's place just recently looking through a whole heap of his old pics with him, must ask him for his opinion on this.

I agree about Neil Woodhams. He was a very likeable person and a good player.  I played against him when he was 15, and  playing for Green Bay. Watched him for many years playing for Waitakere.

Went to Nayland College in the mid-1980's and was still playing for Nelson United in the mid 1990's in a very good side including player-coach Colin Tuaa, Bartram Suri, Ricki van Steeden, Jamie McKenna, Paul Brydon, Steve Tasker and even Jason Pine (yes, that Jason Pine of current radio and football commentary fame). That team became Nelson Suburbs when Nelson United didn't want to enter the new national summer league. Here's a match report from 1995 mentioning Atkinson:

http://www.ultimatenzsoccer.com/id1024.htm

Now owns and operates his own bespoke home interiors business:

http://www.atkinsons.co.nz/

Funnily one of Nelson Suburbs' national league players from the late 1990's Justin Purcell owns my local New World supermarket in Christchurch these days.

New World Stanmore in full effect.

Cheers Pete - a fount of info as usual!

Archie Thompson? 

I grew up in Gisborne and went to see City play all the time.  We had some massive crouds.  I remember TV 1 game and filmed it once as it was such an anomaly at the time. We were getting bigger crouds the Poverty Bay rugby.  Great times on the bank behind the goals.  

I played in a curtain raiser up there once, it was massive, big croud even for that. They really got in behind City in those days.

I went there (hitching) one summer weekend after trekking around Lake Waikaremoana and the wahine who gave me a lift into Gisborne was delighted to find she had a 'soccer' fan in her car coz herself and all her cuzzies were regulars at City games. "We go to the footie on Saturday then to the soccer on Sunday ay." She was a big fan of 'Big Kev', who of course was the larger than life Brit who married the local girl. All good. Except being summer I never saw City playing.

Crouds were big at several national league clubs in those days - Christchurch United vs. New Brighton derbies in the mid-seventies attracted 10,000 people.

I was aware of Gisborne City as kid in Nelson because Fallon and several of his Nelson proteges ended up there - Kenny Cresswell, Keith McKay, Charlie Ure, Johnny Enoka, John Slotemaker, Peter Simonson etc.

Gisborne always had excellent import players. 

One of the most prominent was Yorkshireman Alan Vest who went on to play 17 times for NZ later coaching Perth Glory in Australia and becoming a legend of Malaysian football known as "the White Rajah":

http://www.thestar.com.my/News/Community/2013/08/1...

They sure liked their Yorkshiremen at Gisborne with Rotherham lad Kevin Fallon also bringing out Barnsley's fellow Rotherham-born Colin Walker, a legend of NZ football in the 1980's. An asthmatic who used to puff on an inhaler during games, which explains his unusual career trajectory. Highly regarded for his technical ability and goal-scoring prowess, his weak health saw him alternate between playing for minor non-league sides like Harworth Colliery Institute and sizable clubs like Sheffield Wednesday.

Spotted playing non-league by Kevin Fallon on a trip to Britain in 1980, he brought him out to play for Gisborne in three spells. After the first spell in 1980 Walker impressed enough in NZ to go back to sign for Barnsley. Subsequently scored against Liverpool in a cup tie. And scored one of the great All Whites goals with a curled effort from a good way out against Israel at Mt Smart in 1985.

 At Sheffield Wednesday he scored a 12-minute hat-trick on his debut after coming on as a second-half substitute but only made two first team appearances.

To me that's heroic, to battle against a major health problem like chronic asthma and keep on persevering despite not having the stamina to earn consistent game time, in the end becoming  a major player in NZ and still making first team appearances (if limited) at some quite sizable clubs in Britain:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colin_Walker_(footbal...

http://www.yorkpress.co.uk/archive/2006/09/24/9363...

I remember a Goal scored by Colin (well pretty sure it was him) from basically the corner flag in an International at Mout Smart Stadium v Australia I think