GUERNSEY’S seven senior clubs are prepared to back the entire GFA plan for change, with one minor alteration.
They will agree to the new development league should it embrace 16- to 21-year-olds, as opposed to the association’s proposed 16 to 23.
A source said: ‘If the GFA don’t go for it, they will be mad.’ Presidents and secretaries of the Priaulx teams, plus representatives from the Police and Port City, met at Blanche Pierre Lane to discuss the controversial changes put forward as a county plan to the English Football Association.
The GFA board had threatened to walk out en masse if their proposals were not supported by the clubs at the June annual meeting, but it seems clubs are gradually warming to the ideas of a radical new structure.
Figuratively speaking, the ball is back in the GFA court.
Surprisingly, perhaps, the club get-together was far from being a heated debate and the vast majority were supportive of the GFA’s call for change.
North are believed to be most against change, apparently wanting a 19 to 23 league to sit on top of the existing youth structure.
But, it is understood, the clubs will ‘wholeheartedly’ back the GFA’s proposals with the necessary adjustment of 16 to 21.
Whether the GFA will meet them halfway and, in so doing, ease the ill- feeling that obviously has existed between it and clubs who have not taken well to what they see as blackmail, remains to be seen. Dave Nussbaumer, the chairman (pictured), yesterday declined to comment on the situation without full knowledge of what the clubs want and their reasons.
‘We haven’t had an official response and when I have had that, I can comment.’
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One Article Comment
I think the new structure is a good idea as long as clubs give the younger players a chance and dont put all the players into the squad that are at the older end of the age scale to give them more of a chance of winning the league which in the short term might bring them success but clubs should look it as more of a chance of developing their younger players for priaulx league football.