STAND still in business and you sink. The same applies in amateur sport, although it often takes some time to see the damage taking your eye off the ball causes.
Pleasing to say, more island sports are moving forward than not, so as we kiss goodbye to another grand year for Guernsey sport and ever more eye-catching performances by our elite men and women, it’s appropriate to register a few new year sporting wishes.
The first, most obvious and important, is a string of wins for our teams in the various inter-insulars, mainstream ones as well as the lesser publicised.
While not one for thinking that beating Jersey is the be-all and end-all of the season, it’s always a fillip to put one over the traditional enemy as it at least suggests we are winning in our own backyard.
The second wish is for all players to consider not only what they can do to better themselves in 2008, but what might they do to help their club or sport.
An increasingly selfish society is harming our sports and clubs.
Fewer and fewer people are stepping forward to provide meaningful assistance behind the scenes and nowhere is it more apparent than in our seven senior football clubs where the bulk of the work is being carried out by a diminishing number and increasingly elderly volunteer force.
Put simply, too many want to take and not enough want to give.
And wish three, the big one.
For football, our traditional number-one winter sport, to show clear signs of emerging from its self-imposed slumber and wake to the threat of being surpassed by a growing number of alternatives which provide greater, more rewarding and meaningful sporting challenges.
Not for one moment am I suggesting football should be the number one sport purely because it always has been and that cricket, hockey, rugby, table tennis, athletics etc are not worthy of their more elevated status in the modern media, but because one wishes to see the grand old game rediscover its old magic before it’s simply too late.
We all know it will not be easy.
For a start, there has to be collective realisation that there is a major problem with standards and public image of the game and then, the answers need to be found.
Everyone involved in the game needs to help including, seeing as they are pulling the biggest strings, the English Football Association.
The FA seem to call the tune on every domestic football issue these days and they have to be shown that they need to do more than make every club’s week-to-week life more difficult.
Football, somehow, needs to match what rugby has found via the national league ladder and cricket with the International Cricket Council.
In today’s ever-wider sporting scene, who tops the Priaulx League and whether we can beat Jersey in the Muratti, is not the big deal it was.
Perhaps football needs a sugar-daddy, one that is not the Football Association.
The game needs a challenge similar to the remarkable story that is Ebbsfleet United. But that needs support of big business and men with serious sporting ambition whose hands are not tied by the FA or, indeed, the GFA member clubs whose first priority will always lie with themselves.
Guernsey United is a dream worth pursuing and one which, I believe, is more realistic in the short and mid term than a place within the Fifa or Uefa membership, although those avenues must always be explored.
What a great day for local football it would be if the following was in place:
1 - Guernsey United playing as an independent club home and away in the national ladder on a weekly basis.
2 - Guernsey United reaping the benefit of funded [perhaps scholarship] players at the new FootballCV Academy which currently has two local lads in their number.
3 - The Guernsey Football Association to act as an umbrella body for local football, funding, administration and organising representative football.
4 - The GFA clubs to be responsible for running their own leagues via a restored council.
5 - The disbandment of the Jackson and Youth One Leagues to be replaced by an under-21 competition.
6 - The Railway to incorporate all social football teams.
I’m not pretending it’s nothing other than a monumental task, but it’s a sporting ambition worth pursuing for the benefit of tomorrow’s footballers who, at present, do not have a great deal to set their sights on.
* WHAT’S on your sports wish list?
Contact us at the Guernsey Press sports desk by email sport@guernsey-press.com, fax 240235 or phone 240230.
Guernsey United may be a dream but worth a shot
By Rob Batiste
STAND still in business and you sink. The same applies in amateur sport, although it often takes some time to see the damage taking your eye off the ball causes.
Pleasing to say, more island sports are moving forward than not, so as we kiss goodbye to another grand year for Guernsey sport and ever more eye-catching performances by our elite men and women, it’s appropriate to register a few new year sporting wishes.
The first, most obvious and important, is a string of wins for our teams in the various inter-insulars, mainstream ones as well as the lesser publicised.
While not one for thinking that beating Jersey is the be-all and end-all of the season, it’s always a fillip to put one over the traditional enemy as it at least suggests we are winning in our own backyard.
The second wish is for all players to consider not only what they can do to better themselves in 2008, but what might they do to help their club or sport.
An increasingly selfish society is harming our sports and clubs.
Fewer and fewer people are stepping forward to provide meaningful assistance behind the scenes and nowhere is it more apparent than in our seven senior football clubs where the bulk of the work is being carried out by a diminishing number and increasingly elderly volunteer force.
Put simply, too many want to take and not enough want to give.
And wish three, the big one.
For football, our traditional number-one winter sport, to show clear signs of emerging from its self-imposed slumber and wake to the threat of being surpassed by a growing number of alternatives which provide greater, more rewarding and meaningful sporting challenges.
Not for one moment am I suggesting football should be the number one sport purely because it always has been and that cricket, hockey, rugby, table tennis, athletics etc are not worthy of their more elevated status in the modern media, but because one wishes to see the grand old game rediscover its old magic before it’s simply too late.
We all know it will not be easy.
For a start, there has to be collective realisation that there is a major problem with standards and public image of the game and then, the answers need to be found.
Everyone involved in the game needs to help including, seeing as they are pulling the biggest strings, the English Football Association.
The FA seem to call the tune on every domestic football issue these days and they have to be shown that they need to do more than make every club’s week-to-week life more difficult.
Football, somehow, needs to match what rugby has found via the national league ladder and cricket with the International Cricket Council.
In today’s ever-wider sporting scene, who tops the Priaulx League and whether we can beat Jersey in the Muratti, is not the big deal it was.
Perhaps football needs a sugar-daddy, one that is not the Football Association.
The game needs a challenge similar to the remarkable story that is Ebbsfleet United. But that needs support of big business and men with serious sporting ambition whose hands are not tied by the FA or, indeed, the GFA member clubs whose first priority will always lie with themselves.
Guernsey United is a dream worth pursuing and one which, I believe, is more realistic in the short and mid term than a place within the Fifa or Uefa membership, although those avenues must always be explored.
What a great day for local football it would be if the following was in place:
1 - Guernsey United playing as an independent club home and away in the national ladder on a weekly basis.
2 - Guernsey United reaping the benefit of funded [perhaps scholarship] players at the new FootballCV Academy which currently has two local lads in their number.
3 - The Guernsey Football Association to act as an umbrella body for local football, funding, administration and organising representative football.
4 - The GFA clubs to be responsible for running their own leagues via a restored council.
5 - The disbandment of the Jackson and Youth One Leagues to be replaced by an under-21 competition.
6 - The Railway to incorporate all social football teams.
I’m not pretending it’s nothing other than a monumental task, but it’s a sporting ambition worth pursuing for the benefit of tomorrow’s footballers who, at present, do not have a great deal to set their sights on.
* WHAT’S on your sports wish list?
Contact us at the Guernsey Press sports desk by email sport@guernsey-press.com, fax 240235 or phone 240230.
Article posted on 2nd January, 2008 - 12.00am