This Is Guernsey

By Rob Batiste

THE consultation questionnaires have gone out and the findings from all voices within and around local football will take some time to be compiled, digested and analysed.

But I doubt if anyone is awaiting the results with bated breath and I believe many will already know the conclusion. And that is?

While games such as this week’s Rangers-Saints clash might suggest otherwise, our football can be summed up in a four-letter word but one that does not start with S.
That word is LOST.

While cricket, rugby and other successful sports know the way they want to go, our island’s traditionally biggest and most popular team game is as muddled as the storylines of one of TV’s most popular series. I can’t understand LOST and as far as our football goes, I sometimes struggle to work out how our game has found itself in the state it is in.

There must be an upturn soon. It has to happen and I still cling to the belief it will.

This should not be seen as wholesale criticism of the men who currently run Guernsey football.

Some of them have long recognised the game as being chronically sick and think they know a way to aid recovery.

The mist had descended long before Dave Nussbaumer and co. arrived on the scene and were charged with keeping the good ship GFA off the rocks after the captain, Dave Dorey, had endured a painful end to his reign and walked the plank with a few mutinous officers prodding him off the edge.

But in the two-and-a-half years since the new regime came into power, the visibility has only worsened as the boat was steadied but drifted further into the murk.

The mist is now officially fog.

The women’s game is, and excuse the expression, up the spout, there are plainly not enough senior footballers to maintain three healthy GFA senior leagues, walkovers are given at Jackson League level, there is no longer a soccer school, the island’s senior side are short on meaningful, competitive fixtures and the playing standards continue to slide.

On the plus side, small-sided football is said to be good and the website is informative and above average.

I do not think it requires the FA to tell us where it’s all going wrong and there should be enough people involved at some level of local football, who can start working the bellows and  blow away the fog towards a brighter future.

The FA won’t come up with the right answers for us, I’m fairly sure of it.

We need to think innovatively ourselves, be brave and as independent of the good old cash-cow at Lancaster Gate, as we can be.

A series of measures is needed urgently but not necessarily in this order.

1 – Guernsey United or alike playing in the national leagues.

2 – The Jackson and under-18 league to be replaced by one new division for under-23s, which may allow for a few over-age players.

3 – Slow or block the drain to Mickey Mouse Business or Sunday League football.

4 – Create a new dawn for the junior academy with links to UK academies, possibly even a future Guernsey United.

5 –  Get girls’ football played more regularly at secondary level.

6 – GFA to hand the running of domestic league and cup competition back to the clubs and concentrate on administration, development and representative football.

Of the above, point two is in need of urgent revisiting almost a year after Mac Gallienne threw the suggestion into the melting pot.

Many have said to me creating an under-23 or under-21, or under-20 league – it makes little difference to me – will not work.

Well why not? Somebody please tell me why, not that it won’t.

Surely, by taking out the Jackson and increasing the age-band for those over 16 can only help create a greater wealth of talent for the team feeding first teams, especially if the odd over-age player is permitted.

Consider this.

Currently we have the best Youth One competition in years, with four even sides vying for the championship.

If the game is true to form, many last-year under-18s across those four sides will never play regular GFA league football again as they will give up or go for the easier life in the kickabout Business and Sunday League?

But if they had the chance to go through it all again, next year and the season after that and be one step away from Priaulx League football, perhaps they would re-think early retirement from proper football and second-string football would be stronger for it, as would Railway which would benefit from senior players not being able to get a GFA game anymore.

It can only raise standards.

A spot of re-branding: Sure Mobile Premiership for the Priaulx Cup, Sure Mobile Championship for the new under-23 league and Sure Mobile Reserve League to replace the old Railway and bob’s your uncle.

Not all the bullet points above can be addressed overnight, but I would like to think that by the start of next season a couple of them will have been introduced.

The GFA have to be very strong over this, ruling with an iron fist when they have concluded what they want.

The self-serving clubs have to be made to realise that they have to put the good of the game ahead of their own needs. If they put people in office, they must expect them to direct.

Of the above points, only the Guernsey United scheme should be difficult to pull off with two major stumbling blocks in its path.

Firstly, none of the senior clubs will support a scheme which sees them lose their top players and, secondly, the sheer cost and commitment required of players.

But there is a way it can progress and having an academy at its base is perhaps the way forward.