In season tapping up out of order

FOR a newspaper, or any media outlet for that matter, one of the most interesting aspects of a footballing year is the period leading up to the June transfer window.

Guessing who is going to sign for whom is as intriguing as the majority of games, which unfold before us, but for the dedicated coaches and club supporters it can be a nervous time.

This year's summer transfer talk has false started, meaning that the tittle-tattle of gossip had begun long before the last Division One game of the season.

Get your illegal approach in early seems to be the theme.

If your team is on the wrong end of this tapping up it can be galling in the extreme and while the Angus Mackay for Saints rumour may have been no more than a mischievous player putting a personal wish out into the public arena and then sitting back to see what comes of it, the pursuit of Vale Rec's talented defender Ross Elliott is, Inside Track understands, a little less savoury.

Living on a close-knit island leads to inevitable and understandable 'soft' approaches to players, especially as, it seems to me, half the island's Division One footballers meet each other either on a Friday or Saturday night.

The football talk between them does, inevitably, include the suggestion that they would enjoy their sport a whole lot more if they were to switch clubs.

Poaching of players in this manner will never stop, and why should it?

It is, after all, the right of any individual to have tan opinion and telling Joe Bloggs he is playing for the wrong team is fine with me, especially if it is slurred at two in the morning.

What is surely wrong, though, is when clubs and coaches target a player before a season is finished.

It's happening and it is wrong.

I bet there is not a club that has not been guilty of it down the years, but when that club does so it should be in the knowledge that what goes around, comes around.

The impetus of the 2010 transfer merry-go-round has been provided by the news that Garry Cortez is to be installed as the new North president this summer and although that has not yet been confirmed by a show of hands at an annual meeting, the consequences of its inevitability has got players and coaches thinking especially early.

Cortez, quite rightly, wants old Northerners to return to their roots and the most intriguing aspect of this year's transfer activity will surround how successful he will be. Who will go back?

My gut feeling is that North will rebound quickly after the pain of recent months and I also fancy that next year's Division One campaign has the potential of being tastier than this one.

That can only be good for the game as a whole.

But, everyone, make your approaches with a degree of decency.

SO MUCH for Ian Champion's sob story that 'aren't we unlucky to have so many injuries ahead of the Upton'.

On Thursday night, less than two days before the Upton, he fields all his first-team players bar Sam Cochrane, against Vale Rec in a meaningless Division Two game.

My eyes on the spot tell me his players were scared of making a tackle. Are you surprised?

Very, very strange, many would argue crazy, but in tune with a boss who tells his local paper that very day that so many of his players are struggling to be fit.

HOW cricket is changing.

The fixation with T20 is quickly and predictably choking the professional game to the extent that you worry at what will be left when the public and television get tired of its falseness.

I see T20 is altering shape here with this week's announcement of a four-team peak-of-summer elite tournament which will have the consequence of driving another nail in the coffin of the old Division One evening league.

Is it good, is it bad? I really don't know.

But it is very confusing and I really doubt if it is going to make our top players any better at the game, especially as it will be on grass.

The way I see it, Guernsey standards would be raised by playing on hard and bouncy all-weather tracks, because there is already too much flat-track bullying going on.