A ‘clear majority’ of Island clubs opted for the current campaign to have a meaningful conclusion when asked for their views by the JFA, as opposed to declaring the season null and void. The vote was ratified by the Jersey FA board at meeting on Tuesday evening, meaning Jersey Wanderers’ men claim their first Island title in 30 years and St Lawrence Women take the inaugural Condor Ferries CI Women’s title – their first-ever crown.
Speaking to the JEP, Desbois confirmed he was among those who believed a ‘null and void’ would be the decided outcome, although he did re-evaluate.
‘Quite frankly, I initially thought it should be null and void but as the results have come in I’ve kind of just thought a little bit from the clubs’ perspective,’ he said.
‘You know, null and void … nobody wins. In this case at least some of the football community and the clubs will have something to cheer about.
‘There was never going to be a perfect solution to this problem. It was never going to suit absolutely everybody. Hopefully there will be a few happy players, managers and clubs.’
‘The JFA, in our constitutional documents, we could have gone “right, we’re just going to go with that”, but we felt that’s not right. The clubs are the life and soul of football in Jersey and so we wanted their views … and we went to our board and put to a vote and absolutely every single member of the board who was allowed to vote, voted in favour of supporting the views of the majority of the clubs. There are some clubs who voted null and void who will be disappointed but unfortunately we couldn’t please everybody.’
Full reaction in Friday’s JEP.
