SOCCER: Vikings show a penchant for `beautiful game'

HAMISH BIDWELL
They may have once, but no-one's calling the Marist Vikings a bunch of rugby boof heads anymore.
Because when it comes to success in the round-ball code, you'd have to go a long way to find a team that's done better than they have. April 2004 was the last time they tasted defeat and they haven't lost at fortress Park Island since July 2003.
Not a bad effort for a bunch of blokes who were looking for a change from the bumps and bruises they were getting on the rugby paddock.
"We were all playing touch rugby together in the summer and one day we sat down and I said 'does anyone want to play soccer this year?'. That was seven years ago and we haven't looked back since," said one of the three remaining originals, Mike "Steiny" Baldwin.
"At that stage, I was the only soccer player and everyone else played rugby, or was a nobody. That first year we came mid-table in division two and then we won it the next two years."
"Yeah, the rugby backs stayed and all the forwards went back," chipped in Darren "Alfie" Goodall.
"That's why we were known as Marist Rugby for so many years, until we changed our name to Vikings."
The number of rugby players in the ranks thinned again the following season, when the team took the step up to division one. Some feared that the move into the realm of "serious" football might rob the team of its knockabout personality.
But as goalkeeper Wayne "Scotty" Grant says, that was never going to happen.
"To give you an example, last year we went to Taupo for a pre-season game. The team we were playing had about three balls each and they were all running these shuttles and our whole team was just standing there saying 'what are they doing?'"
"They were a Federation team too and we beat them 2-1, which didn't go down too well," added Baldwin.
"We train on Wednesday nights, between six and seven and from six until quarter to seven, we play two-touch, and then finals football until one team scores five goals, or seven o'clock comes," said David Dickenson.
"We never train for more than an hour a week and if we tried practising anything like set-pieces, it would just be too confusing for everyone."
"It's like when (Hawke's Bay United manager) came down and asked where the team was that had won every game for four years. And there we all were running around like idiots," said Grant.
So they started out as rugby players, they barely train. How on earth, then, have they managed to become so unbeatable.
"We're always building and we've always managed to pick players up along the way," Dickenson said.
"We managed to pick Shannon Dally from Napier City Rovers and the next season, we got Matt McKinney from there as well. But we always have our antenna up and any time someone says they know someone who's looking for a game, we're always interested."
Even if that does mean the players eventually arrive from the most unlikely of places.
"The perfect instance was when Alfie here broke his tib and fib earlier this season," said Grant.
"When he was in the hospital, he recognised the doctor and remembered that he was a footballer. Now he plays for us too."
As the last of the true-blue rugby heads, it's fitting then that the man they call "Alfie" should have the final word.
"Coming from that background, it's amazing to me to think of some of the great players I've been lucky enough to play against," said Goodall.
"Guys like Marty Akers, Paul Halford, Chris Jackson and Jimmy Cudd. It's been a huge thrill and we'll all carry on for as long as we keep enjoying it."