Terry Phelan will play/coach in New Zealand

http://www.soccerotago.co.nz/OtagoUn...helanCoach.htm

This is the article:

By Rab Smith, 9th Sept. 2005

Otago United has appointed Terry Phelan as player-coach for the next
New Zealand Football Championship season which starts in October.

Former Irish international midfielder Phelan is possibly the highest profile player appointed by any New Zealand soccer club. He has played over 500 matches in the Football League with clubs such as Leeds United, Manchester City, Chelsea and Everton and won an FA Cup medal
with Wimbledon in 1988 ( beating Liverpool 1-nil )

The Irishman represented his country at U21 and U23 levels before earning 42 senior caps for his country. These included matches in two World Cup Finals, and several European Championship games.

Phelan (38) signed a contract with Otago yesterday, and will arrive in Dunedin on 22nd September. The Otago squad has already started training under assistant coach Malcolm Fleming and
fitness specialist Neil Davis.

The new coach is married to Julie, and has three children, Connor, Robin and Ashley

Wonder if he will still have time to post on foot.ie :D

The South Island is a great spot, not sure about the football though! The standard could not be very high especially in such a rugby stronghold as Otago. Regarding standards, the New Zealand Knights play in the new 8 team Australian A-League and I recently attended a pre-season cup semi- final match between Melbourne and the Central Coast Mariners. The Mariners won 3-1 against a Melbourne side captained by Kevin Muscat and to be honest the standard was poor enough even allowing for the fact that the season proper had not kicked off.

The standard of football is very poor in NZ. I lived in Wellington for a while and played in a league there. Our team was mostly English and Irish lads and we won by a country mile. That was one of the top leagues and none of us were any great shakes.
Still good luck to Terry - its a lovely country with lovely people and he'll enjoy it there.