Footes Lane crowd is tops
GUERNSEY FC may have been knocked off the No. 1 spot in the CCL Premier Division, but I reckon they are top of the UK national pyramid in at least one area.
GUERNSEY FC may have been knocked off the No. 1 spot in the CCL Premier Division, but I reckon they are top of the UK national pyramid in at least one area.
Their home crowds are the nicest, sweetest-talking and best behaved football collective anywhere in the country.
If there is a better support, I'd be mightily surprised,
You could take your grannie or most nervous old auntie to any GFC game, such is the five-star behaviour of the Garenne Stand audience, which is a far cry from the dens of hate and verbal filth which you will see at major league grounds up and down the country, week in, week out.
It has long been a bugbear of mine that the Football Association, propped up by the written media, have been flagrantly guilty of sickening double standards when they push forward initiatives such as Respect and Kick Racism Out.
Both, of course, are very worthy campaigns and the FA adopt a very high and mighty, sneering attitude when it comes to other football nations supposedly failing to meet expectations of how players and a crowd behaves.
But, at the same time, nobody seems to trumpet the real, No. 1 curse of the British game, which is to turn a blind eye to the filth that comes out of the terraces on match days.
The papers go mad on issues such as did ref Clattenburg call Mikel a monkey etc, but give up very quickly on what I would argue is something far more serious and would ensure I would never contemplate taking my wife to a Premiership game.
That is violence of the tongue and, in the case of Leeds United fans only a fortnight ago, a flagrant assault on a visiting goalkeeper.
The same game the Sheffield Wednesday manager, Dave Jones, suffered verbal humiliation from the terraces only deserving of Jimmy Savile and Gary Glitter.
But what is said and done about it? Next to nothing.
The racism issue is taking over football, little else counts while everyone turns a blind eye to the touchline fan hurling abuse in the ear and faces of players accompanied by unacceptably vile hand gestures.
Down at Footes Lane, thankfully, we have none of that. All is sweetness and light – the worse I've seen being the slightly unfair booing of the referee when the Green Lions lost to Eversley at home. The Footes Lane fans are a flashback to the civilised days of the 40s and 50s when fans of opposing sides would travel to games together and stand together.
Islanders, I am proud to say, won't tolerate the English way.
They, too, pay to be entertained, but do not regard it as a consequential privilege to slaughter the players in front of them.
It is the same with rugby at all levels and during last week's Guernsey home game against Westcliff, when a local fan responded to a mouthy but clean-speaking visitor by yelling 'shut up you t**t,' it was the local fan who was roundly condemned.
