| "My belief is that we will see change" | | JFA Working Party Chair, Steve Meiklejohn |
Whilst football may attract more players to participate than another sport in Jersey, it consistently fails to inspire spectators to turn up and watch: At the three first division games played last Saturday only a handful of people turned out to watch, compared to the hundreds of spectators that packed out Jersey Rugby Club. On Monday night the most prominent figures in island football got together to put forward their views on a healthy future of island football to Jersey鈥檚 Football Forum. All in attendance agreed that the current system of simply playing in the Southwest Counties Cup, the Muratti and taking part in the Island Games wasn鈥檛 good enough; most of the meeting felt that the only option was to join FIFA or UEFA. An almost identical working party came to this same conclusion nearly six years ago; recommending that Jersey should become an international footballing nation. However, nothing ever came of it and by the time Jersey got round to approaching UEFA, they had changed their rules so the island was unable to join. At present this option is still not possible, as president of the Jersey Football Association, Charlie Tostevain explains; 鈥渨e鈥檝e got to take part in what we are able to take part in...the working party five or six years ago thought that the route should have been UEFA/FIFA, unfortunately that wasn鈥檛 taken up at that time and we missed the boat.鈥 Steve Meiklejohn, Chairman of the JFA Working Party reassures that the decisions of the current working party won鈥檛 go to waste like the previous one; 鈥淢y sense is that the JFA recognise that something does need to change both in terms of the structure and in terms of the flagship for the representative team. My belief is that we will see change on this occasion.鈥
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