That’s the strong view of St Paul’s Football Club manager Craig Culkin who would either like to see an extra round of matches played or a winter break introduced therefore pushing league fixtures closer together.
Culkin, who is Island coach, said: ‘Fixtures in the current format are crippling football in Jersey.
‘I’ve had a long think about it, we need another round of fixtures or take a two-month break and put the league matches closer together.
‘On average my players are getting a game every 16 or 17 days and that is not enough.
If they know they don’t have a game on the Saturday many of them don’t bother to train that week.
‘That’s wrong.
Football is looking to raise the standards by way of a better games programme for their representative teams – so the players have to be ‘match’ fit going into representative games.
‘All the managers have the same complaint but, unfortunately, I don’t have all the answers.
We must get this right for next season; we have to have a meeting with all the managers to let the JFA and Coca-Cola Combination officials know what we want, or football may go to the dogs.
‘If it’s a two-month break then fine.
Players do go away a lot in December and January so that would possibly be a good time.
‘If that happens the league and cup games could be pushed much closer together and that way players would then train regularly because they know they would have a game almost every weekend.
‘I know there is currently a shortage of match officials and maybe we could ease the situation by possibly playing on Sundays occasionally.
‘I don’t know the answers but I do know managers, coaches and players are not happy with the current format.
We need to take the bull by the horns, this is a serious issue and we all need to sit down and sort out.’
Coca-Cola Combination president Tim Darwin said: ‘I would accept that we have experienced some problems with the format that we currently use to determine the divisional fixtures; as a result this format is to be revised by our honorary fixtures’ secretary Steve Landick for the 2008-09 season.
‘As far as input from the team managers is concerned I would listen to any proposals that were put forward and to that end I would encourage Craig to get a consensus of opinion and meet with me and other members of the executive to discuss them.
‘What players require is regular football and as the administrators of Jersey league football we should be listening to ideas from people with an interest and acting accordingly.
‘At the same time, however, players and officials need to understand that issues such as division with an uneven number of sides (eg nine teams in Coca-Cola Division I) and lack of success in cup football do make the ideal world of a game every Saturday impossible to achieve.’
