Astute Corbet hits nail on the head

YOU can count on one hand the number of shrewder men in island football than Phil Corbet.

He knows it all, and it's hardly surprising, given that he has filled an awful lot of key roles in the local game.

So when Phil Corbet says via email, and in something of a fit of pique I guess, that Guernsey FC are 'football's puppet master' and GFA merely one of its puppets, he is bang on, 100% right. More than a touch vindictive, but right nevertheless.

The GFA Board will no doubt squirm at reading it and, so too, may key individuals on the new League Management Committee. But it is an unwritten fact that both organisations are, in less than a year of its existence, below the Green Lions in terms of being the real power brokers in island football and how it is viewed by the wider public. Through their short-term achievements, status via a league of higher ability, and their very name, Guernsey FC are dominating the local game. And, I guess, it will remain so as long as the Green Lions remain operating.

Perception is almost everything in modern life and the public perceive the Green Lions to be making the running in today's football.

But, contrary to Phil Corbet's view, there should be nothing wrong with that and the GFA Board and LMC should generously accept it, because in the greater scheme of all things 'footy', it really matters not.

Indeed, it is time football people stopped worrying about where power lies, whether GFC is more important than the Muratti side or league representative XI, and just get on with doing what they do. The politicking should stop and, while it may make good copy in these pages, it is rather tiring.

I see the Corbet rant as a dying ember in the whole transitional episode of an archaic and creaking football scene, suddenly given a new lease of life by GFC but throwing up more 'what ifs' than shots on goal in the most one-sided of our many one-sided youth league games.

The Muratti team business is, I believe, the last vestige of a power battle in the whole saga and one, I am sure, the people who run Guernsey FC have never sought.

Ultimately the GFA Board – thanks in the main to the foresight of its newest member, 'Commander' Blower – has come up with the right choice of island manager.

And to widespread relief there will be no selection furore which, I'm sad to say, would no doubt have occurred had Phil Corbet and one or two others been put in place of selecting this year's Muratti teams.

Sense has been seen and we should all move on as there are many important issues in island football to be solved, and none of them have anything to do with GFC.

It is a great shame that Phil Corbet – who was one of the best ever island managers and certainly the best development officer we ever had, by a country mile – has allowed himself to be cut out of a possible return to a job of this importance by his antagonistic attitude towards GFC.

It has done him no good at all.

And I find it strange that he has said to the clubs he wanted to address, that he was always against GFC – given that only a year ago, in his programme notes for a Vale Rec Somerset County Cup game, he wrote: 'Now that Guernsey FC is becoming more than just an idea I would like to wish all concerned with it the very best of luck in what promises to be a significant step forward for Guernsey football'.

Now, we are all guilty of a fluctuation of views over the course of a lifetime, but to go from that statement to being openly hostile in a relatively short time, is rather strange.

It saddens me that he has taken this stance because Phil has the knowledge and could have had a big role to play in football's future, one which I confidently predict will now settle down and see all key elements of the domestic game working as it should to make ALL local football better.

It matters not who is perceived as top of the tree, which organisation has perceived power.

They just need to do their respective jobs and the game will be better for it.

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WERE Alderney to produce footballers the quality of their boxers, Kevin Graham might have cause to be a very worried man.

Billy Le Poullain, the 'blue thunder', is the latest in a long line of quality pugilists to come down from the northern isle and, on the evidence we have seen thus far, he could yet be as good as any – with the possible exception of the immediate post-war professional, Don Cosheril.

I have been lucky to see a few of Ridunia's most rugged best.

Back in the late seventies, early eighties, the Rose boys, Paul and Nigel, guaranteed blood and thunder any time they stepped into the ring at a Gerry Walsh show at the Carlton.

Paul, in particular, was class and tough as they come. I would have loved to see him take on Matt Jennings.

There was young Arthur Jupp with the Muhammad Ali looks, light- heavyweight Alan Jones, Nigel Shaw and, very recently, Adam Rose, Nigel's son, a teak-tough southpaw.

Because you know what you are going to get from the Alderney gym, it is always great to have their boxers around on our bills.

But what about Jersey? Why don't we ever see any of their finest?

Tonight's full-house show at Beau Sejour would have been all the better for a few unofficial CI title bouts.