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October 23, 2003 SWANZ star Yvonne Vale bringing curtain down on career by Jeremy Ruane When the New Zealand National Team, the SWANZ, take on all-comers in Vanuatu at the Oceania Football Confederation Olympic qualifying tournament next March, they will sport a new goalkeeper as part of their first-choice line-up. Just days after veteran SWANZ international Wendi Henderson announced her retirement from playing, the country's number one soccer custodian Yvonne Vale, has confirmed that she will be hanging up her gloves at the conclusion of the current National Soccer League campaign. The thirteen-times-capped SWANZ star opted to announce her decision at the Lynn-Avon United prize-giving dinner on Saturday evening, and it came as a genuine shock to a number of her team-mates and fellow club members alike, such is the aura of reliability and dependability which Yvonne has exuded when wearing the number one jersey of either her club, province or country during the past sixteen seasons. It was not a decision which was made hastily, for, unbeknown to all but a select few, Vale has quietly but grittily played through the pain barrier during the last three seasons, not to mention endured the specialized training demands necessary for a goalkeeper of her calibre to retain her position as the country's premier shot-stopper in soccer circles. While her goalkeeping abilities remain undiminished, the nagging, persistent injury has forced the premature curtailment of a career which has seen Yvonne make over fifty appearances for her beloved Auckland province, whom she first represented in 1991. She made the first of her international appearances against Russia in the Jayalitha Cup tournament in India in August, 1994, and has proven herself a worthy successor to legendary SWANZ custodian, Leslie King, in wearing the number one jersey in eight of New Zealandís last nine matches on the international stage, dating back to May 2000 at the Pacific Cup tournament in Australia. The birth of her second child forced Yvonne to miss New Zealand's Oceania World Cup qualifying campaign in 1998, and the Champions tour of Germany and the USA which preceded it, but there can be little doubt her greatest displays at international level came against China. The 6-0 thrashing at the hands of the Asian giants at the aforementioned Pacific Cup tournament would have been far greater but for Vale's heroics throughout the match, while three years prior, she was in goal as the SWANZ produced arguably their finest performance in the last ten years when succumbing to the then Olympic silver medallists 3-1 in a tri-series tournament across the Tasman. On the club scene, Yvonne's greatest successes have undoubtedly been in the colours of Lynn-Avon, with whom league championship winners?edals and Uncle Toby Knockout Cup winners medals galore have been supplemented by prized individual honours, such as the Auckland Player of the Year award in 2000, and the 2002 MVP award from the thrilling scoreless Uncle Toby Final against Ellerslie. The biggest testimony one can pay Yvonne Vale, as the quietly-spoken thirty-three-year-old prepares to don her gloves and goalkeeping jersey for the final time on November 1 - when Auckland plays Canterbury on her favourite ground, Ken Maunder Park - is this:To say her successors at club, provincial and national level have big gloves to fill is something of an understatement, such is Yvonne Vale's goalkeeping prowess, and the standards she expects of herself in her position. The number on her jersey says it all.