Manx for the memories
In September, a story in the Non League Today newspaper told of how a team from Guernsey were considering making an application to join the Kent League. Although geographically closer to the South and South West England, Kent was their target because of the frequency of flights to London Stansted Airport.
The main point from the article that caught my eye was a quote from Mike Appleby, the FA National Leagues Manager, who said the FA would not be opposed to such a move, and illustrated the point further by stating that there would be no problem “if a team from the Isle of Man wanted to compete in the North West Counties League”.
The article was run just a couple of weeks after Tony Sheldon, a non-league football fanatic who helps out at Rochdale Town, had alerted me to the fact that two officials from the Isle of Man had run the lines in the FA Cup tie between Oldham Town and Rossendale United at the end of the August. Tony also kindly contributed an article on the event to the league newsletter and website, having spoken to both officials after the game.
That information, coupled with a vague recollection that a team from the Isle of Man had once competed in the FA Vase against teams from our league, was the sum total of my knowledge of Manx football, but I was intrigued by the idea of competition between clubs in our league and the island.
It seemed like an idea that was worth exploring, and I decided to launch a one man investigation into past, present and potential future links between our league and the Isle of Man.
The obvious place to begin expanding my knowledge was the Isle of Man Football Association website, which can be found at www.isleofmanfa.com. It’s a nicely designed site, full of information, and a browse through it gives you a good feel for the footballing set up on the island.
There are 27 senior clubs on the island, with 13 in the Sure Mobile Premier League and 14 in the CFS Division Two. Curiously there is no Division One. A run through the club names and details didn’t result in bells of recognition ringing, apart from all of the main towns having a team containing their name and, not surprisingly, a large number of the teams originate from in and around Douglas.
Just to digress for a moment, one of the teams in Division Two, Foxdale, must have one of the most eye catching ground names and addresses of any club in the English speaking football world. Any club playing at Billy Goat Park has got to be worth a visit, and the prospect of visiting a ground of that name which is located at an address of Back of the Moon, Stoney Mountain Road, Foxdale had me momentarily contemplating the possibility of Googling cheap flights and car hire on the IOM. A must visit destination for any groundhopper, I’d have thought.
Anyway, armed with some newly gained rudimentary knowledge, it was time to fire off some e-mails to various named officials on the IOMFA website to ask if they could help me with my research. From the responses I received, one name kept cropping up and it was pretty obvious that any article about football of the Isle of Man just had to have input from him.
That man is Eric Clague, who can look back on a lifetime of involvement in Isle of Man football. He started out as an official at Colby, in the south of the island and over the years has served in a variety of roles within the IOMFA, chairing finance, disciplinary and fixtures committees among others.
He was Vice-President of the association for a number of years, wrote a book commemorating the official centenary of the IOMFA in 1990, keeps records of all the island’s representative games, and is the IOMFA’s statistician as well as having a roving type of role within the association that can best be described as “Minister without Portfolio”.
Having been given his home number, I spent a fascinating and thoroughly enjoyable hour on the phone to Eric, whose enthusiasm and love of grassroots football shone like a beacon positioned in a prominent position on the top of Snaefell (note the subtle Isle of Man related reference to illustrate the point).
After outlining what I was looking to achieve, I started by asking Eric about the FA Vase, and he explained that only one club, Douglas High School Old Boys, have ever competed.
“They entered a number of times in the 1990’s, but in the end there were a number of factors that contributed to them deciding to bow out”, he said. “In order to compete, they had to do a lot of fundraising and get sponsorship to meet the travelling costs, and when the costs began to rise, that was when they had to stop.
“It was a shame really, because to begin with there was great interest around the island when they were drawn at home. I remember they got crowds of over a thousand at the first home games, which was fantastic for an island of our size.”
I was chatting to Eric while seated in front of my PC, and at this point in the conversation, I quickly visited the Football Club History Database online to find Douglas High School Old Boys’ full record in the FA Vase, and the search revealed that a number of the games they played were against clubs from the NWCFL. Their record reads:
1989-90 PREBLACKPOOL WREN ROVERS A 2-1
1 ST DOMINICS A 2-2
1r ST DOMINICS H 4-4
1r2 ST DOMINICS H 5-5
1r3 ST DOMINICS A 1-4
1990-91 PRE SKELMERSDALE UNITED H 0-2
1992-93 PRE SALFORD CITY A 0-5
1996-97 2Q NANTWICH TOWN H 0-3
1997-98 2Q GLASSHOUGHTON WELFAREH 2-3
As I ran through the list with Eric, he recalled the games involving St Dominics, and that the first and second replays were played on successive days. That immediately rang a bell, as those two games were refereed by none other than League Development Officer Geoff Wilkinson. In Issue 3 of NWSS, there’s a profile of Geoff and within it, he shares his recollections of those games.
So, with some good memories of Vase games in the past, why don’t other clubs in the Isle Of Man want to emulate Douglas High School Old Boys? Eric explained there are a number of reasons.
“Aside of the travelling costs, there is only one football stadium on the island that has floodlights, which prevents our clubs from taking part”, he said. “Even the main stadium on the island, Douglas Bowl, has no lights, yet for a number of years it hosted a pre-season tournament involving professional clubs such as Stoke City, Stockport County and Bolton Wanderers among others.
“The two main teams in the Premier Division, St Georges and Peel, are both keen to play in the Vase and are actively looking at ways of installing floodlights but the cost is the problem. Peel are managed by Rick Holden, the former Manchester City and Oldham Athletic player who runs a physiotherapists practice on the island, and he is very keen to improve standards both at his club and around the league in general.”
But surely if there is a collective interest in having clubs from the island competing in senior FA competitions, just one ground with the required facilities would be enough? And surely at least one club could get enough backing and sponsorship to compete each season? Eric explained that might not be as simple to achieve as it sounds.
“The Isle Of Man is a very insular place in many ways, and what I call the “Manx crab syndrome” often kicks in. If one club tries to better itself and tries get ahead of the rest, it’s almost as if the other clubs pull it back into line with the others, like a group of crabs all cramped together in a bucket with one trying to escape.
“I remember when Douglas HSOB played in the Vase, they asked for other games in the league that day to be postponed, so that the focus could be on their game, and all the other clubs objected. I even remember that one occasion, the club left without a fixture because Douglas were playing the Vase complained, as they believed they were being disadvantaged by not having a fixture through no fault of theirs.
“I think it would be great for football on the island if we could have a team competing in the FA Vase, maybe the league champions each season, but until we address the problems of the costs involved in getting facilities up to standard, and find funds for travel costs, it’s hard to see how it will happen.”
Couldn’t the IOMFA help? Or even the Manx Government? Surely they can see the benefits of connecting the clubs on the island to the UK mainland, which in turn would help to grow experience and raise standards. Once again Eric shot down my points with some harsh realities.
“You have to remember that the Isle of Man competes in the Island games, which started off on the island in 1985 and now take place every two years. Since then the games have been held in places like Gibraltar and Shetland, and recently have been even further afield with the last games held in Rhodes in 2007 and the next games will be in Aland, off the coast of Sweden, in 2009.
“The Manx government contributes to the cost of sending an Isle Of Man team to the games, and when you consider there are competitors from about 12 sports all going, you can imagine that costs a fair amount of money. The Isle of Man football team is one of the centrepieces of the event, and the football tournament is like a mini European Championship with many of the teams at the same level. I attended the event in Shetland in 2005, and the football tournament was a great competition.
“The Government will contribute to send a full island team to events, but when it’s an individual club who wants funding to travel and compete outwith the island, the feeling is that they should meet that cost themselves.”
There is, however, obviously no problem in getting the money to pay for officials to come over for selected games, given that two officials from the island, Kevin Giles and Alan Cowin, officiated at Oldham Town earlier in the season. I got in touch with the IOMFA Referee Development Officer Tommy Crowe, to find out more about how this system works and how the appointments are allocated.
Tommy explained: “Our officials are sent normally one fixture per season, sometimes two, and always as assistants. This is because of the restraints on what level we can attain on the Island, which is only as high as level 5 in the refereeing structure because of travelling and availability at short notice.
“We assess our match officials in our league games, and at the end of each season we draw up a list of officials whose marks were the best over the course of that season. From that the Isle Of Man FA draws up a shortlist of officials to be allocated to any designated game given to us by the FA in Soho Square. We also advise the FA of any dates when the officials will not be available, usually due to holidays.
“The games our officials are appointed to are allocated by the FA’s Referee’s Appointments Secretary, and we are sent a letter from the FA to advise us of our imminent fixture and if we can accept the fixture.
”Normally only two officials at the most per season get a game, it was myself and a colleague who did a game at Nelson last season, but we’ve had three this year so that has been a bonus. As well as the two guys who went to Oldham Town, I assisted in the FA Vase game between Atherton Colls and Bootle in September and thoroughly enjoyed the game.
“The officials from the Isle of Man do not get assessed on these games. One, because we are only assistants unfortunately, and also because of our unique position. We are not able to go higher than level 5 and are not assessed on a yearly basis, unless of course our club marks are low and then the individual will be.”
So who pays the travel costs?
”Travel costs are paid for by our parent county FA, the IOMFA. Because of the cost, it is not feasible for a small organisation such as them to pick up the tab for officials to regularly fly over, the only way that could happen is if an individual decided to fund the trips himself.
“We had an example a few years ago when Chris Checketts, a young lad with lots of promise, had to move back to the mainland and further his career there. He is now a Referees Development Officer in Bedfordshire.”
So it’s travel costs that prevent Manx clubs competing regularly against clubs in the mainland’s non-league pyramid, and travel costs that prevent match officials from furthering their careers outwith the island. To get an idea of what we are talking about here, I did a quick Google search in early November for flights from the Isle of Man to Blackpool and back on the first Saturday in December.
On flights timed to suit anyone involved in a game with a 3pm kick off, the cost would be about £110 per person. Obviously there are flights in and out of Manchester and Liverpool as well, and different times of the year could mean different prices, but it’s not beyond the wit of anyone to try and set up a deal in advance when in many cases the dates will be known several months before. Hardly a big deal to organise.
When you have enthusiasm for the idea of clubs and officials from the island being involved in games against teams from the UK mainland, it seems a shame that the money required can’t be found. Until a solution is found, though, football players and officials in the Isle of Man will always be held back and unable to participate in mainland competitions because of the problem of travelling costs.
But surely the problem isn’t insurmountable? Using the above figure of £110, imagine a party of 17 players, 4 coaching staff and say four club officials made a day trip to the North West from the Isle of Man for an FA Vase fixture, or if the IOM team were drawn at home, a team from our league made the trip in the opposite direction. 25 times £110 equals £2750, and you’d need a coach from the airport to the destination and back again. Say £250 for that as a round figure and you get a total figure of £3000 to use as a base price.
A lot of money for a club at our level of football obviously, but couldn’t the FA assist in some way? The Isle of Man FA is an affiliated County FA just like Lancashire, Manchester, Staffordshire etc (in fact they have been affiliated since 1908). To celebrate 100 years of association, couldn’t Soho Square set aside a small part of their massive budget to help give clubs in the Isle of Man the chance to play clubs in our league (and the Northern Counties East and Northern Leagues too come to that) each year in the FA Vase? It’s probably fair to assume the Manx clubs wouldn’t progress too far in the competition, so it wouldn’t be a vast sum of money each year to find. Shouldn’t someone be asking the question at least?
Just think – ten trips over the space of a number of seasons would cost £30,000, and give hundreds of individuals the experience of playing against new opponents, and extending the already wonderful experience of being involved in non-league football and playing in the FA Vase. We could be talking either about one of our clubs travelling over to the Isle of Man, or the Manx champions travelling over here.
Either way, it would be a great experience for all involved, and there’s no doubt that any such tie would generate a higher level of interest than perhaps ties between two clubs playing in the same division.
There’s the problem of facilities too, but again, you’d only need one ground in the whole of the Isle of Man to have floodlights and the necessary facilities, and if all the clubs in our league can achieve that, there’s surely no reason why one ground in the Isle of Man can’t be brought up to scratch. Let’s say £50,000 as a round figure for the ground upgrade.
To summarise then, to meet the cost of upgrading facilities at one ground on the Isle of Man, and fund travel costs for ten games in the FA Vase for Manx clubs over a number of years, would cost maybe around £80,000. It’s a lot of money, but it’s a drop in the ocean compared to the weekly wage bill at Premiership clubs. Remember that’s a one off cost to encourage competition over a number of years, it’s not an amount that needs to be found every single year.
Just think of all the interest that would be generated, the good experience for everyone involved, the good PR for the ideals of making competitive football available to as many people as possible, and benefits that could be delivered for Manx football. All of that could be achieved for an amount of money that probably represents about two week’s wages for Joey Barton. If you put it like that, it doesn’t seem such bad value for money after all, does it?
The Vodkat League on-line magazine
