TOMORROW night at Springfield Stadium, Manchester United and Glasgow Celtic will attract upwards of two thousand spectators to watch their under-21 sides clash in the second game of the Jersey International Football Tournament. Quite disgracefully, the six games in the inaugural Guernsey Tournament attracted to Foote’s Lane a similar total, leaving the organisers, Sporting Eventualities and key people in Guernsey football, scratching their heads and asking why?
On reflection, it is fair to say that at £10 the ticket prices for a stand seat were a shade steep.
But if you want to watch quality, you pay and clearly the Guernsey public do not like their football enough to do so.
This was no series of exhibition games, although at times the brilliant Argentines toyed with the opposition as if it were.
When it was their turn to chase the blue-and-yellows from Buenos Aires it would have been no surprise to see the poor Glasgow Rangers central midfielders collapse in a dizzy and exhausted heap.
One felt sorry for them as they were made to turn one way and then the other in the vain hope of breaking up Boca attacks.
Boca will go on to delight Jersey crowds, of that I’m sure and it will take a very good Man U or Celtic to beat them.
As a new Boca fan, I keep my fingers crossed they return to Guernsey and defend their title, but clearly the out-of-pocket organisers have much to ponder and work on in the coming weeks and months.
A headline sponsor needs to be found, as well as individual match sponsors.
Should that be achieved, then there is a good chance the tournament will return to Foote’s Lane in 2005.
In the meantime the GFA could do well to discover why so many footballers and people closely involved with the sport, stayed away. It was embarrassing.
Football boasts about being the biggest sport in the island, but where were the players when they had the opportunity to learn from and be entertained by one national age-group side and a Boca team that may one day produce full internationals?
In the course of the four matches this correspondent watched from the Garenne Stand, I recall seeing present just two Priaulx League players - Belgraves’ Micky Ogier and new North signing, Charles Pinsard.
Do are island’s top footballers consider it beneath them to pay to watch football, or do they think they know it all already?
I suspect the latter but either way, those footballers missed out and I can assure them they are not fit to lace the boots of the brilliant Argentines, seven of whom make my team of the tournament.
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Where were players to look and learn?
By Rob Batiste
TOMORROW night at Springfield Stadium, Manchester United and Glasgow Celtic will attract upwards of two thousand spectators to watch their under-21 sides clash in the second game of the Jersey International Football Tournament. Quite disgracefully, the six games in the inaugural Guernsey Tournament attracted to Foote’s Lane a similar total, leaving the organisers, Sporting Eventualities and key people in Guernsey football, scratching their heads and asking why?
On reflection, it is fair to say that at £10 the ticket prices for a stand seat were a shade steep.
But if you want to watch quality, you pay and clearly the Guernsey public do not like their football enough to do so.
This was no series of exhibition games, although at times the brilliant Argentines toyed with the opposition as if it were.
When it was their turn to chase the blue-and-yellows from Buenos Aires it would have been no surprise to see the poor Glasgow Rangers central midfielders collapse in a dizzy and exhausted heap.
One felt sorry for them as they were made to turn one way and then the other in the vain hope of breaking up Boca attacks.
Boca will go on to delight Jersey crowds, of that I’m sure and it will take a very good Man U or Celtic to beat them.
As a new Boca fan, I keep my fingers crossed they return to Guernsey and defend their title, but clearly the out-of-pocket organisers have much to ponder and work on in the coming weeks and months.
A headline sponsor needs to be found, as well as individual match sponsors.
Should that be achieved, then there is a good chance the tournament will return to Foote’s Lane in 2005.
In the meantime the GFA could do well to discover why so many footballers and people closely involved with the sport, stayed away. It was embarrassing.
Football boasts about being the biggest sport in the island, but where were the players when they had the opportunity to learn from and be entertained by one national age-group side and a Boca team that may one day produce full internationals?
In the course of the four matches this correspondent watched from the Garenne Stand, I recall seeing present just two Priaulx League players - Belgraves’ Micky Ogier and new North signing, Charles Pinsard.
Do are island’s top footballers consider it beneath them to pay to watch football, or do they think they know it all already?
I suspect the latter but either way, those footballers missed out and I can assure them they are not fit to lace the boots of the brilliant Argentines, seven of whom make my team of the tournament.
Article posted on 3rd August, 2004 - 12.00am