May 12, 2010

HATTIESBURG, Miss. – New Zealand Football (soccer) named its 23-man squad of players for the FIFA World Cup to be held in South Africa beginning in July. Named in the squad was former William Carey University and NAIA All-American Andy Barron. Barron played for the Crusaders from 2000-2003 before graduating in 2004 with a degree in business management.

After college Barron played in Ireland and the USA before returning to New Zealand for the start of their inaugural professional league season in 2006. He currently plays for Team Wellington in the New Zealand Football Championship. He has played 13 times for his national team ‘the All-Whites’ including games against Brazil, Spain and Mexico.

Current Carey coach Nigel Boulton had charge of Barron in his final year as a Crusader and says this about the midfielder, “Andy was a class player. His technical ability was probably the best of any player I have coached here at Carey. He strikes a ball very well and everything is clean about his play. He reads the game. Everyone at Carey is delighted he has been able to make the World Cup squad and we look forward to seeing him on the field in July. He will help inspire the dreams of many current Carey players and hopefully all NAIA soccer players”.

Barron and his family keep in touch with Boulton through e-mail. “In his last e-mail he was asking about our team for next season and also gave us his itinerary which includes a preparation game with Australia in Melbourne, then off to Austria for a couple more games against Serbia and Slovenia. Then it’s down to South Africa for one last warm-up game against Chile before the World Cup opens”.

Carey has a number of former players who hail from South Africa and they will be cheering Barron on as well as hoping to meet up with their former teammate if they get the chance to. As Boulton explained, “We have enormous excitement from our South African alumni for the World Cup. Some returned home but others are still in the USA working but all are making plans to be in South Africa for the World Cup.”

 Carey boast three South African NAIA All-Americans in Marco Mthembu (96), Warren Budde (01) and Donivan Esterhuizan (01) as well as Academic All-American Justin Maullin (96) who is the current head coach at the University of North Carolina-Greensboro (NCAA-D1).

“There will be a small William Carey block party going on somewhere in South Africa all through July, I just hope the former players and teammates get to meet up with Andy at least for a short while.” concluded Boulton.