This Is Guernsey

By Rob Batiste

Football’s brains deserve praise for looking ahead. But

sports editor Rob Batiste argues that the clubs must play their part and be more ambitious themselves FOOTBALL is well used to standing in the firing line.

As the island’s biggest sport, it should expect to be.

It does not always like it but the hardy annual it is, the game can take a good punch and just about stay on its feet. The legs are wobbling though.

The game at senior level is sliding.

But the refreshingly good news is that the people who are running it, capable men as GFA president Dave Nussbaumer, representative football director Mark Le Tissier and island manager, Steve Ogier, know it and are determined to do something.

Nussbaumer is virtually through the end-of-season club dinner tour and he has been extracting worried fro-wns with his speeches.

The general theme is that the sport is at a crossroads. ‘What do you - the clubs - aim to do about it?,’ is his message. But the GFA alone cannot solve the ills that have befallen our game.

GFA have been criticised for a good deal in recent times but, believe me, those running the game cannot be accused of lacking ambition.

The answer is far from straightforward and, as with most things, is hugely and perhaps prohibitively expensive.

Running and developing a sport is proving harder than ever.

Just ask hockey and rugby, two of the big team games which have big problems of their own.

Hockey is in the midst of its own little crisis with the GHA president quitting after his plans to regenerate a men’s top flight arguably in worse shape than football were sabotaged.

As for rugby, GRUFC are basking in their second Siam success in three years but for all their ambition at first-team level, their junior and youth development programme is hopeless and continues to fail miserably.

Football could show them a thing or two on that level.

The trouble with football is that the ambition that lies within the GFA executive is altogether different from the ambition at the clubs which, inevitably, make the sport tick.

An example.

Last season after a horrendously embarrassing defeat for their first team, a high-level inquest into that particular club’s travails brought the amazing suggestion from one individual that the Priaulx team should be dropped. Have you heard the like?

Now it would be easy for me to say that every senior Priaulx club should use their initiative and go out and attract players in a manner that the Guernsey Rugby Club has. But, of course, the GFA clubs largely fight simply to exist and not have such grandiose ideas.

A few diehards at most clubs are keeping things ticking over, which is altogether more worrying.

Yes, at club level a balance needs to be struck between realism and ambition, but I do think most clubs are guilty of lacking the latter.

Enjoying wonderful playing and social facilities is one thing, but putting a decent team out on the park is equally important for the image of the club and the sport.

Article posted on 19th May, 2007 - 12.00am