IT’S that time of the year for resolutions and Tony Vance has got his in before the first whistle.

Should we be surprised?

Not really, I guess.

James Blower was 100% genuine, I am sure, when he said yesterday that it was only the timing of Vance’s departure that had caught him off guard, not the fact that he had resigned.

But what was it that really that made Vance walk his own plank?

It was not the arrival of Blower as the GFA’s director of representative football, I know that much.

Nor, I doubt, was it just the lack of very open public support from the GFA chairman Chris Schofield that made Vance walk away.

More, I strongly suspect, it was down to the combination of three factors: 1 – the GFA’s plain silly October ultimatum for players to put island representation ahead of the Guernsey FC campaign, or face a potential ban; 2 – a huge workload on and off the pitch for this young father; and 3 – the backstabbers who might happily pat him on the back for winning the 2012 Muratti while, behind the scenes and for many months, been working against what Vance and co are tirelessly and so commendably are trying to achieve for the long-term benefit of island football and future generations.

It’s a sad and unnecessary conclusion to a reign that lasted barely 30-odd months and which promised much, much more.

Vance leaves from a position of strength and widespread respect, and the GFA should have treated him accordingly.

Instead, the GFA, perhaps innocently and certainly very ignorantly, made it so hard for him to continue when they introduced that so stupid new ruling that island players would be suspended for putting GFC, the quasi-island side, ahead of representing ‘their boys’ in the Muratti or Inter-League Cup.

With that clumsy edict they made the island’s elite players a commodity in an amateur world, and now we are going to pay for it.

In the long run it would never have been perfect for one man to oversee the selection of all senior island sides, in their three guises, for an extended period, year in, year out.

Quite simply, it would have simply been too onerous on that individual to do all those jobs.

But it is a great shame that the football authorities could not have allowed that to happen for this one season of new-wave football. Just one.

The situation demanded it.

The situation required clarity and the sport to work truly together at a time of change and finding new feet.

Instead, a few conniving silent individuals across the island football scene have laid the foundations for the mess we now find ourselves in.

Spare a thought, though, for James Blower. This is not his doing.

He has arrived with a raft of fantastic new ideas, charisma and drive to push them through, and, having taken one step forward, has had the mat pulled from beneath him.

Blower, I believe, is a resilient soul though and, in time, with the right help, could make a very significant difference to the local game.

He is open and clear-sighted enough to make our representative sides stronger across all the age-groups, and he would have happily done it working alongside Tony Vance.

Now, he has the unenviable task of finding someone to take a job that is now something of a poison chalice.

I sincerely hope my old Athletics FC buddy Steve Ogier has the sense to steer well clear of returning to the island hot seat and concentrate on working with the elite youngsters, while it is hard to imagine Ross Cameron, the best and most qualified young coach around, wanting to do the job when he has not finished off the one he started at Northfield.

In the short-term it makes no sense for anyone other than a caretaker to come in and fill the role on the remaining senior island match days, whether that be one or two games.

It requires no more than that.

The best players are playing on a weekly basis under one man and to one man’s tune, so it makes no sense at all to get another coach in who intends to perhaps play a different, unfamiliar way, and with it wreck the advantage Guernsey now has over Jersey of familiarity and teamwork.

Get the bloke in who can deliver the most rousing pre-match speech and point out a few technical matters at halftime. It needs no more than that because Tony Vance will already have told the island’s best players the rest, in 40+ matches for the Green Lions, which do quite nicely for me when it comes to being representative of Guernsey football.

A tweak here, a tweak there, will be all that is required, except picking the starting team of course, but a sensible man would not wish to alter much.

Of course, only time will tell how much of a problem this all becomes for the remainder of the 2011-12 season, and if the Green Lions

manage to wrap up the CCL Division One title before the home game against Bookham on 17 March, the new ‘official’ island coach may get to work with most of our finest footballers, instead of a bunch of reserves.

But if the Bookham game is anything but a ‘dead’ one, then watch out for trouble.

And whose fault will that be?

Answers please on a card to the GFA Headquarters, the Corbet Field, Grand Fort Road.