Dempsey, who passed away last week, aged 86, was a throwback to a golden era, when sport including his beloved football, was more about the winning and playing of the game and its colourful characters, whether they were administrators, players or even spectators.
Merchandising was minimal and a gate ticket cost a few bucks. We didn’t work weekends, the shops weren’t open 24/7 and just about every Kiwi family was involved in sport and recreation.
Dempsey linked us to the days when sport was mostly amateur, when players, coaches and administrators had day jobs and family lives, yet loyally dedicated much of their spare time to club duties and getting involved. Playing or management tasks were rewarded with a few more bucks (if you were lucky) that would usually be sent straight back over a club bar or into a tuck shop.
Dempsey directed football in New Zealand at a time when rugby, the national sport and led in those days by the gruff authoritarian Ces Blazey, was suffering in the popularity stakes, following the disastrous nation-dividing 1981 Springboks tour, when South Africa still enforced apartheid.
Football, or soccer as we’ve grown up knowing it, was never going to become New Zealand’s national sport, even though it has for decades been the most popular sport for children.
But if there was ever a time when football was challenging for national supremacy, it was back in those halcyon days of 1981-1982, on the road to Spain, World Cup 1982.
Although it’s now 26 years ago, for those old enough to remember, it’s not difficult to recall how soccer got an amazing boost through the efforts of the John Adshead-Kevin Fallon coached All Whites.
Dempsey drove the magnificent off-field organisation and campaign. Adshead and Fallon accomplished the almost impossible, steering a varied group of mostly ex-lower league pros and ex-pat Brits and Irish to their world championship title, New Zealand’s qualification for Espana 1982, the nation’s first and only soccer world cup appearance.
The campaign captured the sport-mad public’s imagination and support grew with each All Whites victory. It wasn’t unusual in those days to be at Eden Park on a Saturday watching Auckland’s rugby side in a crowd of 25,000, then to be at Mt Smart the next day in a crowd of 30,000 shouting for the Kiwi footballers from the grass bank.
Adshead and Fallon had the right stuff to mould a bunch of rough diamond soccer nomads into a formidable side that was good enough to beat Australia on the road to Spain, no mean feat considering the Socceroos had been good enough to qualify for the West German World Cup of 1974.
Dempsey instilled the confidence in the player group and supported Adshead and Fallon to the hilt.
From that year, 1982, Dempsey became the face and voice of soccer in this part of the world, becoming the Oceania Football Confederation (OFC) president, a position he held until 2000. He also rose to high ranking positions in FIFA’s hierarchy.
After 30 years of trying, he eventually got FIFA’s full recognition of Oceania, having it elevated to complete confederation status in 1996.
“We will retain fond memories of an accomplished football leader and an extraordinary man, whose great human qualities ensured that he left an indelible mark on the game of football, not only in helping to develop football in Oceania, but also globally as a member of the FIFA executive committee,” says FIFA president Sepp Blatter.
Dempsey became the centre of attention for world football news media in 2000 and 2006 when he got harassed in the severe backroom lobbying efforts of country’s wanting his FIFA vote to win staging rights for future world cups.
He never wanted to disappoint anyone and always acted with New Zealand and Oceania football’s best interests at heart. That was behind his thinking in the 2000 and 2006 votes.
Dempsey was born in Scotland in 1922 and arrived in New Zealand with his wife Annie and daughters Alice and Josephine in 1952.
He played football for and later coached Eastern Suburbs in Auckland and by the 1970s was the province’s delegate to the NZ Football Association.
He formed the well-remembered Dempsey-Morton building firm and operated that until the early 1980s, after it had constructed about 4000 homes.
A condolences message from Dempsey’s 1982 All Whites reads: ‘Much respected leader of the 1982 All Whites campaign. A wonderful ambassador of the game and someone who is now enriched in the history of NZ football forever.
‘Your contribution has been immense and your name will always be at the forefront when 1982 is discussed.
‘The travel from the front of the plane, the Guiness, and antics in the dressing room after the qualifications in Singapore are all things we remember with great fondness.
‘Sadly missed and eternally grateful too.’
