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Allan Jones
Injury Forces Jones To Step Down
by Jeremy Ruane
 The role of coach of the New Zealand women's soccer team has seemingly taken on poisoned chalice proportions in recent seasons.
Since Maurice Tillotson's tenure concluded with defeat by Australia in the final of the 1998 Oceania Women's World Cup qualifying series, our leading ladies have undertaken seven international tours, each of whom has been overseen by a different coach.
The reasons for these frequent changes at the helm are many and varied, but the latest is undoubtedly the most unforeseen and unfortunate of them all, especially coming as it has on the eve of the Oceania Women`s World Cup qualifying tournament.
For a coach to step down of his own volition, with the prospect of coaching at a World Cup Finals - usually the pinnacle of their career where most coaches are concerned - looming large on the horizon, is not an action undertaken lightly.
But that is what Allan Jones has opted to do, the ongoing discomfort from the ankle injury he suffered when taking a New Zealand women's training session in Hangzhou last November, during the two-match tour of China, forcing his hand.
A hands-on coach throughout his nigh-on forty-year coaching career, Jones has found it increasingly challenging to personally demonstrate what he wants players to do since contracting an injury which left his ankle at least twice the size it should be.
As a result, Jones has opted to selflessly step aside for both his own and the players' benefit, his desire to coach the New Zealand players to the best of his ability having, he considered, been compromised by an injury which wasn't getting any better.
Indeed, if it doesn't respond to treatment, it may well bring a premature conclusion to the coaching career of Allan Jones, one of the most thorough and professional mentors to have graced the game in this country.
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