Priaulx clubs cannot afford Alderney trips
ALONG with Pete Mahy and Graham Skuse, I would very much like to see Alderney FC continue to play in the Priaulx league and I share the latter’s exasperation at the way local football has developed in recent years. The basic problem is that resources (manpower, facilities and finances) are spread too thinly. However, I consider that their scathing criticism of the Guernsey-based Priaulx clubs for refusing to pay for their away trips to Alderney, thus jeopardising Alderney’s participation in the league, is unfair.
First and foremost, the welfare of Alderney football is not the responsibility of anyone in Guernsey. Not the Guernsey Football Association, not the Guernsey Football League management and not the local clubs.
Like Guernsey FC, Alderney FC chooses to play in a foreign league. Guernsey FC happens to choose England, Alderney happens to choose Guernsey. Guernsey FC, in order to participate in the English leagues, pays the travel costs of the away team for every single one of its 40-odd league fixtures, so it’s hard to see why the same principle should not be applied to Alderney.
In order to afford these travel costs, Guernsey FC requires significant sponsorship, some of which would otherwise, I am sure, go to the Priaulx clubs. So the Priaulx clubs already suffer once as a result of the arrangement requiring Guernsey FC to pay the travel costs of the away teams for its home games. To ask them to suffer again in an arrangement designed to avoid Alderney having to do the same as Guernsey FC seems like a case of asking them to take the rough with the thin end of the wedge.
The Priaulx clubs are in different positions from each other in terms of finances and one or two probably could afford the trip to Alderney without jeopardising their own existence.
But my information is that, in the main, the clubs already carry out fundraising activities along the lines of those mentioned by Graham, but those funds are absorbed by the modern-day costs of running a club, which have escalated in recent times for all sorts of reasons, not the least of which involve complying with politically motivated regulations filtering down through the British government and via the Football Association.
MATT WATERMAN
Flat 2,
3 Burnt Lane,
St Peter Port,
GY1 1HL.