NUAFC 1968-2018

2017
Jeff Coulshed
by Cordwainer Bull
Jeff Coulshed was the
undisputed godfather of Waikato
women’s football and part of the very
fabric of the wider game there for
over five decades.
Coulshed died on July
4, but leaves a legacy of major
achievement as both a men’s
and women’s coach, while his
memory will also endure as
one of the code’s most
colourful characters.
Jeff was a likeable
rogue, completely untroubled by
protocol or etiquette once you put
a microphone in his hand. Think
Arthur-Daley-meets-Terry-VenablesmeetsBernard
Manning.
Jeff had been a player of some
note in the 1960s, and then turned his hand
to coaching in 1979, steering Hamilton AFC to
arguably their finest northern league title – just
pipping Bert Ormond’s very tidy Mt Roskill on goal difference – and
back into the national league.
That was a huge achievement in his debut coaching
season, picking up a club in relative chaos after the horrors of 1978.
Hamilton had been relegated from the national league and had axed
previous coach Kevin Fallon, who had earlier sacked a couple of the
club’s best players in Alf Stamp and Alex Young.
But for Jeff it was only the entree.
In the late 1980s he became the pivotal figure behind the
rise of women’s football in the Waikato as representative selectorcoach.
He put Waikato on the women’s map for the first time,
winning back-to-back titles in 1988 and 1989, a previously
unthinkable proposition given the powerhouses that were Auckland
and Wellington.
In August 1994 Coulshed was named interim SWANZ (an
unofficial acronym bestowed on the national team that loosely
stood for Women’s Soccer Association of New Zealand) coach in for
the Jayalalitha Cup in Madras, having previously taken New Zealand
age-group women’s teams.
Domestically, from the 90s onwards he popped up at
Wanderers Sports Club and more notably had several spells at
Ngaruawahia United, where he was much loved, and took The Green
Machine to the Chatham Cup semis in 1998.
But more than the coaching credentials – much more than
that – Jeff was a larger than life personality with a keen sense of the
ridiculous, and a cheerfully sardonic outlook leavened only by
regular offerings of sage wisdom.
And he had that ever-so-distinctive Coulshed chuckle – A-
hyuh hyuh hyuh – which was a footballing treasure all of its own.
Back in the days when Waikato football still ran
Personality of the Year awards, Jeff was a three-time winner, and
probably could have collected it in any given year without eyebrows
being raised. Mind you, former Waikato Football Association
president Bill Thomas was always rightfully alarmed at the prospect
of handing a microphone to Coulshed at any time. A-hyuh hyuh
hyuh.
Jeff’s after-match speeches could take listeners on a rollercoaster
of laughter, nodding agreement, or pure outrage, and there
was no more entertaining football raconteur around the manor with
whom to have a pint and swap lies. Ahyuh hyuh hyuh.
Back in the 80s and 90s there was quite a culture of clever,
feisty after match speeches, and in a pre-social
media era Waikato football fans would
cram into clubrooms to be treated to the
likes of Roger Wilkinson, Steve
Williams, John McDermid, Tony
Wilkinson doing a turn on the mic’
with very funny or provocative postmatch
material. But Coulshed. Well,
he never knew where the edge was
until he stepped off it.
Jeff performed one of his
more memorable music-hall gags
circa 1996 at Ngaruawahia in a postmatch
speech, when he recounted
on-pitch banter with a referee from
his own playing days.
“I asked the ref what he would
do if I called him a twat,” Coulshed said.
“He said he would send me off for foul and
abusive language. “So I asked him” ‘What if I
only THINK you’re a twat?’ “The ref said the laws of
the game didn’t allow him to send anyone off for simply
thinking something. “Right, well then I think you’re a twat.” With a
comedian’s sense of timing, when the laughter subsided, Jeff added
the kicker. “Bloody ref sent me off. A-hyuh hyuh hyuh.”
Later, in June 1998, Oratia were far less than amused
when Coulshed did another one of his turns at the aftermatch at
Parrs Park. (“Unfunny,” they complained, which in Jeff’s eyes was
probably the most damning thing you could say.)
Oratia made the mistake of naming Brad Harden as player
of the day in advance of Coulshed being offered the microphone.
Despite his team having won 3-1, Jeff gave a brutal impromptu
critique of Harden’s performance, and then progressed to merrily
sully the reputations of several people who had been on the
sideline, with a number of tasty expletives tossed in.
He was duly fined $200 by the Northern Provincial Council,
to which he offered a vintage Coulshed response: “Billy Connolly
gets paid millions for that sort of material – I get bloody fined!”
Of course Jeff could get away with some of this latter-day
patter because he had a decent reservoir of football credentials in
the bank by then from his earlier exploits.
Jeff, a striker (and a panel beater) first played for Hamilton
AFC in 1964, the club’s debut season after taking over from
Technical Old Boys. Immediately he was also
selected as a Waikato representative and played in every one of
Waikato’s games that year.
But it was only by chance that Hamilton came to be his
club after he had emigrated from his beloved Skelmersdale in west
Lancashire in his early 20s. (If there was anything Jeff was prouder of
than having his name spelled with a “J” rather than a “G”, it was
hailing from Skem’, and I’m picking there is nobody reading this far
down his obituary who hasn’t heard Jeff’s apocryphal tales of
Skelmersdale United.)
Back in 1991 Jeff explained to me how he became such a
Hamilton diehard.
“I’d left England when I had a very bad ankle injury and I
was told I would never play again – indeed, some people would
claim that I haven’t either – but I was passing through Hamilton and
got asked to play. “I’d called for a jug at the Riverina (longsince
demolished Hamilton East pub). Harold Robinson (deceased
Hamilton AFC life member) heard my accent and asked if I played
football. There were lots of good players wandering around, not
playing, in those days, so it was an obvious question.
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