Sooner or later football will just have to change
THE man behind the plan feared he might have to get his mother and friends along to boost numbers.
But Nick Leigh-Morgan need not have worried .
His big moment in the domestic footballing spotlight attracted a healthy-sized gathering to the St Martin’s AC Clubhouse this week and everyone respectfully listened to what he had to say.
That was the easy bit, Nick.
When it comes to football the dissenters are invariably the ones who don’t front up, they sit quietly in the background and pull plans to pieces. Nit-picking is their speciality.
But does Nick Leigh-Morgan’s plan for a move to summery football have a chance of success, will the clubs buy it?
Frankly, I think not – or to be more precise, not yet, and the early results form an online poll suggest the majority of players – those who have bothered so far to vote – are against.
By mid-morning yesterday 214 had voted online and 136 – 63.55% – had voted no. A further 7.01% voted ‘maybe’ and 29.44% yes to warm-weather football.
I used the rider ‘not yet’ because whatever the result of this unofficial online poll, one day soon Guernsey football will have to make dramatic changes as so few above the age of 16 will want to play, having grown tired of being strung along by a sport that every pre-season promises so much, but by Christmas is drowning in a sea of mud and players get fat, disillusioned and are heading for an alternative recreation.
Mark Le Tissier knows all about the clubs and the nit-pickers because before he got his teeth into Guernsey FC, he served as GFA secretary and chairman and it was while he was in the latter hot seat he got the idea of summer football.
He talked it through and soon realised it was not for Guernsey – then.
But, a decade on, the thought is: ‘What IS for Guernsey football?’
Despite the excellent efforts of GFLM to bond and improve league and cup football, all the while they do so with one arm behind their backs. The clubs have the power and the clubs are – like Guernsey people – scared of change and naturally resist.
Yet, football has to change and I believe it will thanks to the thought processes of people like Nick Leigh-Morgan.
That change may be slow and in stages, but it will. It has to or it will die.
The Guernsey FC chairman said just that in ‘any questions’ on Monday night.
The following day, GFLM chairman Nick Graham admitted these weather-driven shutdowns are hurting the game and turning footballers away, which is far more worrying than whether the canteen tea-lady is prepared to deliver her refreshments in July, a nonsensical concern aired this week.
I have a real distaste for T20 cricket. It’s a slog-a-thon that is not a fair content between batsman and bowler.
Give me the proper stuff – Tests – every day of the week.
But I know that T20 is the future, Test cricket will soon be the past. I know it, I accept it.
Sometimes you cannot fight the inevitable.
Local football should heed that sentiment because it cannot resist real change simply because of history.
n MOVING football to the warmer months would not be the death-knell for the long-established summer sports.
If it was, I would not be so enthusiastic over the theme of Leigh-Morgan’s move for change.
Summer sports will remain because other than junior level football, I cannot see the day when senior and 16s football moves lock, stock and barrel to summer in the manner of professional rugby league.
No... cricket, softball, golf and athletics should have no need to worry but, at the same time, they cannot quibble if football opts to move into May and August and open up the opportunity for a substantial pre-ordained winter break.
Cricket, softball, golf and athletics do not worry about the effects of football when they decides their own event schedules, so football should consider, but not get too het-up worrying, what it might do to the summer sports. Ultimately, it must do what it is right for its own sport.
As for those who see the communal 3G pitches available to all to combat and eradicate the problem of winter monsoons, they are living in dreamland.
These pitches cost a fortune, and who will provide a cool million-plus to fund a couple for the island?
For a start, it won’t be a government that cannot raise more than £28k to put into sports tourism every year.
And even if there were two neutral full-size 3Gs available, the cash-strapped GFA clubs – and they are just that, believe me – would moan that they would be losing out financially over matches played elsewhere.
There are only two answers to this particular conundrum.
Every senior club lays its own 3G pitch or the fixture schedules edge towards the warmer months.
And as the 3G per club option is never going to happen, that leaves only one option.
n AMONG all the football postponements, have you noticed the growing numbers of youth league walkovers lately?
This past week has seen two more, Sylvans unable to field an U16 side against St Martin’s and North likewise for their scheduled U18s clash with Saints.
Just saying.
As for rearrangements, the total number is now up to circa 140.
