Morning Star
For many years I’ve wondered about a team called Morning Star. I first heard of them back when Terry Lees joined them after playing for Newport County, but that was all I knew about them. When I finally got to see league tables for the Hong Kong league there was no sign of them. I wondered if they were a lower division team, or maybe Morning Star was an alternative name that came about through a sponsorship deal, perhaps for Tsuen Wan, as Terry Lees was listed as playing for them on their Wikipedia page. More recently I found out they had a pair of Dutch brothers in their squad: Paul and Marcel Van Der Blom, but could still find nothing else in English, a couple of days ago I found something in Chinese that after translation by Google led me to believe they were expelled from the league.
I sought enlightenment from the team at Offside.hk, and they supplied the following information:
‘Morning Star were kicked out off the league early October, as they failed to provide the necessary financial documents to the HKFA. They were basically broke and the newly arrived players homeless over night, as Morning Star couldn't even afford the hotel bill. At that time, they had only played 1 game in the season (which they lost 0-6 to Rangers). HKFA therefore just annulled the result and re-arranged the remaining fixtures. (They also tried to secure Kees Storm from Seiko and Ronny Goodlass, which ended in a dispute.)’
‘Storm and Goodlass were first acquired by South China, but they released them both in March 1983 amid financial problems as well. Not sure if they stayed in Hong Kong thereafter. The whole story of Morning Star left a bad reputation for Hong Kong football in international media. Morning Star manager Harry Staudt was the one who tried to bring in more players from the Netherlands. He also wanted to have goalkeeper Hugo van Houten (who previously played for Tung Sing) and Spitz Kohn as coach. Many Dutch players left Hong Kong after this disaster, but they mainly blamed Harry Staudt for all this (not the HKFA).’