Issue 100 : 13 March 2022

Talofa Lava, Kia Orana, Malo E Leilei, Tena Koutou, Hello ...

... and welcome to the latest issue of “For The Love Of The Game”, the official e-zine of the New Zealand Amateur Sport Association Inc., founded in Wellington, New Zealand in 2017.


 


If you have any feedback on this issue, ideas for future articles, or would like to contact the Editor, please click here. And, you are invited to forward the e-zine to others you know, who may be interested in reading it. An archive of earlier editions of the e-zine can be found here. For those who follow Twitter, you can also follow the Association, @AmateurSportNZ.

If you are interested in applying for membership of the Association, please click here.


100th Issue Celebrates Four Years Of Publication ...

The first edition of this fortnightly publication was made on 18 March 2018, a little under four years ago and a year after the Association was initially formed. In the augural issue, the Association welcomed the membership of Basketball New Zealand and the Wellington Rugby Football Union, also announcing the development of its on-line presence and highlighting concussion safety issues for organisations engaged in amateur competitive sport.



99 issues later, “For the love of the game” continues to bring topical updates of interest to all those interested in the role of sport in building and sustaining New Zealand communities. As a recipient of this newsletter, thank you for your continued interest in the work of the Association!

(You can read previous issues of "For the love of the game", here).).


“He Whakamaumahara Ki Te Tangata” – Remember The People ...

The Association is embarking on an exciting new development as part of its “community engagement” strategy, in creating a new on-line database of New Zealand amateur sports people who contributed to community sport through the century 1850 to 1950. The project is called “He Whakamaumahara Ki Te Tangata”, or “Remember The People” and will tell the stories of those who helped build New Zealand society through their “love of the game”.



The project is intended to complement “Te Akomanga”, which is the New Zealand Government’s official programme for teaching and learning the history of New Zealand and New Zealanders. The database, which will be housed on the Association’s web-site (www.asa.org.nz) is in the process of development with further updates to be provided on its availability, shortly.


FC "Zirka" FC Zirka Kropyvnytskyi ...

FC Zirka Kropyvnytskyi is a Ukrainian amateur football club with its team currently (prior to the Russian invasion) playing in the Ukrainian Amateur League. The club traces its history of a football team that existed at the British factory of “Elvorti” (an agricultural machinery firm founded by Robert Pearce Elworthy) in 1911.


(The Ukrainian amateur football club "Zirka" celebrates its centenary in 2022)


After the occupation of Ukraine by the Bolsheviks, the factory was "nationalised", its team was dissolved, and the factory was converted into Soviet factory "Chervona Zirka", hence the club's current name. The Soviet football team “Chervona Zirka” was formed a century ago in 1922.


(The club’s home turf on February 24, the day of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine)


The club’s home is three kilometres from Kropyvnytskyi airport which was bombed in the first week of the invasion of the Ukraine by Russian Federation forces, with all civilian aircraft destroyed. Due to the imposition of martial law in Ukraine, on 24 February, the football championship of Ukraine was suspended.


(Volunteers filling sand bags in Kropyvnytskyi, Ukraine, to fortify the city’s defences)


Incorporated Societies Bill Progresses To Third Reading …

Over the past week, the Incorporated Societies Bill has progressed through the Committee of the Whole House stage and will have its Third Reading in Parliament, next week. You can read the parliamentary debate concerning last week's legislative progress, by clicking here.


(The Bill will have its final (third) reading in Parliament, next week)


In last week’s debate, Hon Todd McClay (National, Rotorua) referenced the work of the Select Committee in responding to public submissions, noting that the original draft of the Bill placed an “unreasonable burden through regulation and, therefore, cost upon small societies [which] many of them would not have been able to meet” and that, “many incorporated societies now believe they have been listened to by the committee.”


(ACT's Damien Smith took the time to discuss the Bill with the Association)


Damien Smith (ACT) observed that “the differentiation with sports societies, the All Blacks, your local rugby club, it's going to take a while for this to bed through and it's going to take some time to actually be interpreted properly”. He further noted that, “I think the acid test will be whether [the new Act] causes more administration or it makes people happy. So I'd like to one day see a survey of that for people who have to use this legislation.” This could be an excellent future theme for the "National Sport Club Survey".


Amateur Athletes Are At No Less Risk Than Their Professional Counterparts ...

Recently, the “Australian Sports Brain Bank” reported its preliminary findings after examining the 21 brains posthumously donated by sportspeople since the centre’s inception in 2018. The less frequently reported victims are amateur athletes, whom the research has concluded are no less at risk than their professional counterparts.



Associate Professor Michael Buckland, a neuropathologist at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital and the University of Sydney has said it was time that Australian concussion guidelines were reviewed. “There is room for an overarching guideline for sport in general,” he said. “But the ones we have at the moment, when it comes to CTE, are manifestly inadequate. There have been concerns raised overseas that the majority of doctors that took part in the international consensus conference to draw up the international guidelines, (from which the Australian guidelines are drawn), had very close ties to professional sporting bodies.”



You can read more about the research, here.


Sport New Zealand Announces A New Structure ...

Following a review undertaken by by EY and EY Tahi (EY’s indigenous Māori firm), a new governance structure for the Crown’s sport entities has recently been announced, as illustrated by the diagram below.



Under the new structure, the Board of HPSNZ will be subject to the governance oversight of the Board of SNZ, which in turn is responsible to the Minister for Sport and Recreation. Under the new structure, SNZ continues to be monitored by the Ministry for Culture & Heritage.

The specific role (and composition) of “Taumata Maori” in the overall governance structure is still a work-in-progress, with a Charter and Terms of Reference for this advisory group to be developed in consultation with Maori over the next few months.

Raelene Castle has been appointed to the new role of Group CEO.


From The Archives ...

LAWN TENNIS

NEW ZEALAND HERALD, VOLUME LIX, ISSUE 18232, 27 OCTOBER 1922, PAGE 4

“The removal from our midst, early in the week of Mr. Selwyn Upton one-time champion and always excellent sportsman cast a gloom over tennis circles, and especially among those connected with tennis who remembered the days when "Sel" (as he was nicknamed), by means of a perfect drive, both fore and back hand, vanquished the old-time champions, and himself assumed the title. Many will remember his fight with the former at the Eden and Epsom courts." 


Selwyn (“Sel”) Upton was the youngest son of John Henry Upton (a Chairman of the Bank of New Zealand and one-time Mayor of Auckland) and Eleanor Upton, of Shelly Beach Road in Ponsonby. He was born in Auckland in 1878 and had four brothers and two sisters.


(Sel Upton (left) and on the course at the Auckland Golf Club)


From the time he attended Ponsonby Public School as a child, Sel was recognised as a sportsman, going on to represent his province in athletics, tennis and rugby football. While a student at the Auckland College and Grammar School, he was heavily involved in athletics representing Auckland at the national Secondary School Championships in 1895, while also competing as a member of the Auckland Amateur Swimming Club. He played for the Ponsonby Juniors (rugby union) in 1898, winning the inaugural Auckland junior championship. In 1900 he was selected for the Auckland “B” representative team as full-back. A long-time member of the Auckland Amateur Athletic and Cycle Club, he joined the West End Tennis Club in 1899, becoming a member of the Club Committee.


(Sel Upton (circled) at the 1906 Auckland vs Taranaki inter-provincial tennis match)


Sel first represented Auckland as a tennis representative in 1906, after winning the Auckland men’s doubles championship. In 1908 and 1909 he was the Auckland men’s singles champion, a member of the Auckland inter-provincial tennis team and he also competed in the 1909 New Zealand Lawn Tennis Association’s championships in both the men’s singles and doubles. Upton was also a long-term member of the Auckland Golf Club. A man of diverse interests, “in the sphere of horticulture, he achieved notable success as a grower of daffodils”.


(The Upton family were well-known Queen Street retailers, in Auckland)


In 1911 he married Winifred Hartley Leys, with whom he had three children. In his professional life, he was the Commercial Manager of Brett Printing and Publishing Company, before being appointed as Secretary of the Auckland Gas Company, (of which his father was former Chairman). He died on 24 October 1922, following a severe illness of nine months, aged 44 years. Selwyn Upton is buried in Auckland’s Purewa Cemetery.


The Final Word ...

“The field of amateur sport may not in the far distant future prove the greatest ally of diplomacy in securing mutual cooperation and understanding between nations.”

(Hawera & Normanby Star, 18 March 1922)


(The remains of the Yuri Gagarin sport stadium in Chernihiv, home of the Ukraine women's national football team, after Russian shelling this week)


© New Zealand Amateur Sport Association Inc. (2669211), 2017

Registered Office, Level 1, 57 Willis Street, Wellington, 6011

P O Box 582, Wellington, 6140


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