About Billy

Billy's life in football

Billy was born in Wellington, just the other day in 1962. As a junior he played for Seatoun, before he went to Rongotai College, who in those days were one of the powerhouses of school football. In 1977 he helped them win the Nationals in Christchurch (actually, he didn’t do much. He spent most of the season on the bench). In 1979, as a seventh former, he played a more prominent role as Rongotai won both the Nationals in Tawa and the secondary school knockout cup, winning the final 3-1 over Auckland Grammar. Soon after that game came the nice surprise that All Whites coach John Adshead, who’d watched the final, had picked Billy and team mate Michael White to represent New Zealand B for a game in New Caledonia. Unfortunately the game was scrapped. Billy considers himself very fortunate that ex New Zealand coach Barrie Truman, then coaching National League side Wellington Diamond United, took an interest in him and invited him to join Diamonds.

Billy played the last game of the season for Diamonds in his seventh form year, then every game in the 1980 season and helped them to fourth place in the League.

Although Billy played as a striker, and had scored bundles of goals for Rongotai, including 14 goals in seven games when they won the Nationals, he forgot where the back of the net was and up until the last game of the 22 game season, he still hadn’t scored for Diamonds. In the last game however, against Hamilton, with only fifteen minutes left, Billy remembered that if you want to score you have to shoot, so he did that and scored a cracker to notch his first goal in the National League.

At the end of the season, Billy was picked for New Zealand to play in the Merdeka Cup in Malaysia, where he got a taste of playing in front of crowds of 40,000. While officially the team was New Zealand, in reality it was a B team, as the coaching staff took ten youth players to help them develop for the upcoming World Youth Cup. The first round of that was the Oceania Championships in Fiji, which New Zealand won, beating Australia 2-0 in the final. Nowadays winning the Oceania section would be enough to take NZ to the World Cup Finals, but back then there was an extra round to play, so NZ went to South America, where they beat Israel but lost to the home country Argentina. In 1981, Diamonds won the National League, with injury restricting Billy to only half the games. For the next few seasons Billy developed as a senior player (ie made little impact), but by 1984 he was starting to influence games and at the end of that season, he was named Wellington Player of the Year and was picked for the All Whites to tour England. In 1985, Billy’s club team, now named Wellington United, won the National League again, with Billy finishing as the country’s second top scorer and voted New Zealand’s Players’ Player of the Year. In 1986, Wellington finished third in the National League, and though it wasn’t such a good year personally, Billy was picked again for the All Whites to play a series of games against a visiting Russian club. 1987 was a better year, as Billy again finished second top scorer, with 19 goals in 26 games, and was again Players’ Player of the Year. He also won the Arcus Trophy, for best and fairest player in the league. He felt somewhat robbed in the top scoring stakes, as he was ahead comfortably on goals until, with only two weeks of the season left, Christchurch’s Keith Braithwaite scored SIX goals in one game to go ahead. At the end of the season, Billy went to England to trial with Bournemouth, where Harry Redknapp was manager, but under the extra workload of daily training, an injury he’d been carrying for several months flared up. He returned home to have the injury diagnosed as pubis symphositis, or osteo pubis, where the pelvic bone was breaking down under the strain of too much football. The remedy was 12 months complete rest. Not exactly music to the ears of a keen sportsman!

Billy recovered to take up a contract with the Belgian first division side Beerschot in 1990-91, and after that returned home to play for five other National League sides in New Zealand – Miramar, Napier, North Shore, Central and, in the year 2000, at 38, he played for Mt Wellington, winning a final National League winners medal. That meant that Billy’s National League career had spanned four decades, from the 1970s to the 2000s. During that time, he’d scored for all six National League clubs he played for, a statistic thought (only by him, admittedly) to be a record.

Billy Harris – Coach

Billy’s coaching career started while doing a Sports Diploma at AUT on the North Shore. As part of the course, the students were required to find a team in the area to coach. Billy approached Westlake Boys High, and as luck would have it, Westlake needed a coach for the 1996 season. Billy got the job, and using the systems learned under Barrie Truman helped the outstanding squad of talented players win both the Auckland championship, with a perfect 14 from 14 record, and the National tournament in Napier, where they beat Kelston 3-1 in the final. Since then, Billy’s experienced a full range of coaching experiences. He coached Kristin College first eleven, and they too won their division with a perfect record. He was player-coach of Glenfield Rovers first team and was sacked after seven games. At the same time he was coaching Forrest Hill Milford’s woman’s first team, which won their grade. He was player-coach for Central United for two seasons in the Northern Premier League, and helped them to win the Chatham Cup in both seasons. The first of those was a great occasion, as in the final in Napier, Central, featuring a young Ivan Vicelic, came from 2-0 down to beat Napier City Rovers 3-2 in extra time. Next up he player-coached Takapuna for two seasons in the Northern Premier League. Taka finished 2nd and 4th, and during that time, Billy made his 500th senior playing appearance. The club presented him with a Takapuna shirt with 500 on the back. At the same time, Billy was also coaching the women’s first team, who finished third two seasons running. Then Billy coached Central United in the National League (3rd and semi final of the Chatham Cup), followed by Eastern Suburbs in the Northern League (5th, and semi final in the Chatham Cup). There were more seasons at Central, as first team assistant coach, and reserve team coach, before two seasons at Papatoetoe. In the first season, Toe just avoided relegation, and in the second finished fourth in the Premier League. Since then, Billy has been High Performance coach at Eastern Suburbs, where he coaches children from 7th to 10th grade. All the while, since 1998, Billy has been running his own coaching programme in primary schools round Auckland, and estimates he’s run nearly 10,000 classes. That’s aside from all the training sessions he’s run at the clubs and schools mentioned above.

Billy Harris – fan

People keep asking Billy if he gets sick of all that football. Nope. Ever since he got his first Shoot magazine in 1970, with Georgie Best on the cover, he was hooked. (Who would have thought that fourteen years later he’d play against Best, when Best played for Reading against the All Whites?) Anyway, Monday was Shoot day, when he’d go to the magazine shop to get his Shoot, which had taken three months to get there by boat. The crushing disappointment he felt if the Shoot hadn’t arrived is still raw, not even compensated by two Shoots the next week. But it was nothing compared to the disappointment he suffered when his team Manchester United lost to Southampton in the 1976 F A Cup final. He blubbered like a baby for that night and the next. How addicted to football was he? When his family stayed at a batch in Taupo one summer holidays with no TV, Billy was in a panic. It was Sunday, and Big League Soccer was due on at midday. In those days, Big League Soccer was the soccer fan’s only taste of British football. He had to see it. He wandered down to the local park with a ball, hoping to find some local kids, befriend them, and watch their TV. No kids anywhere. At two minutes to midday, something had to be done, so Billy walked up to a house, banged on the door, and asked the nice elderly lady within if he could pretty please watch her TV because, you see, Big League Soccer was on. Moments later, he was sitting in a comfy chair right in front of a big TV, being served sandwiches and a glass of milk. Billy’s need to see big soccer has endured, and over the years he’s been to the World Cups in Italy, France, Japan, Germany, South Africa and Brazil.

About Billy

Billy at Barcelona v Valencia last season at the Nou Camp