HONG Kong Football Club captain John Clarke has lashed out at the local union for delays in announcing fixtures for the coming season. Clarke said that with two weeks to go before the season starts, players have no idea who they will be playing in the first matches or what competitions will be available. The provisional fixtures were endorsed by the union on Thursday night, although Clarke has yet to see them. ''People come up to me and ask me what's going on and who we are playing and there is nothing I can tell them,'' said Clarke, who takes over from Mike Ferrier as captain. ''Everyone knows that the Hong Kong national team are playing Taiwan in December. But we don't know who we are playing in two weeks. ''That does not give the impression of a well organised Union.'' Officials from Kowloon have also expressed disappointment with the union. But director of fixtures Jamie Scott blames it on the lack of communication within clubs and said the union acted correctly in issuing the fixtures. ''An outline of the fixtures for the first two months was out at the beginning of August,'' said Scott. ''In fact, representatives of 12 of the 13 clubs were at the first fixtures meeting. ''They may say that there is no communication in the union, but those fixtures were issued to all the clubs and it is those individuals within the clubs who have not been communicating with their members.'' Club take on Valley in their first match of the season on September 25 in a new competition called the season's opener. The competition, one week after the Valley 15s, is a knockout event devised as a warm-up for next month's triple round-robin First Division league championship. Scott said the new format for the season is designed to put more emphasis on 15s play, rather than sevens, and prevent a repeat of last year when Club had wrapped up the title a little more than halfway through the season. ''The objective of this format is to provide competitive and relatively continuous 15-a-side rugby from September 25 to near the end of March. ''This is partly in response to views that the union have, in recent seasons, paid too much attention to sevens and not enough to traditional 15s.'' He added that the forthcoming season is crucial to Hong Kong as they build up to next year's Asian Championship, the winner of which will automatically qualify for the 1995 World Cup in South Africa. As Club gear up for their clash with Valley, Clarke is making no predictions. However, he does not expect his side to be as dominant as they were last season, when they won everything except the Bell's Knockout Cup. And it is their conquerors in that Cup final, Kowloon, who they fear most. ''Kowloon are the team to beat this season,'' said Clarke, a 29-year-old Englishman who used to play for Blackheath. ''We don't have as much depth as we had last year and there won't be any easy games.'' Club can breathe a sigh of relief that full-back Justin Weston, last year's Player of the Season, will stay in Hong Kong when it seemed work commitments would force him to relocate to the Middle East. They have recruited some new players, who have recently settled in the territory, including Australian second-rower Paul Timmins and former Blackheath fly-half Neil Munn. The First Division has six teams who will play each other three times. Club and Kowloon will be challenged by Valley, Police, British Forces and Club Dragons.
