LAST Saturday I enjoyed 20 minutes of the under-18 football game in the County Youth Cup between Jersey and Kent at Springfield, before Kent took over and, eventually, dominated the match.

The scoreline of 2-0 to Kent could easily have been doubled and, in the second half, the Jersey boys were lethargic and were often second to any 50-50 ball.

It was only afterwards that one of the parents told me that the Jersey players had been told to turn up for training, after school, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday of that week, before they played in the competition the day after.

‘With school, followed by homework, followed by football training, by the time that Saturday came around, my son was reeling,’ I was told. ‘After the game, all he wanted to do was sleep. He was completely exhausted.’

These are teenagers, remember, so to train so often, after so much school and revision time, probably accounts for the lethargy they showed on the field. If they don’t already, the JFA ought to lay down closely defined guidelines as to how many hours youth players should play/train, prior to a big match (with Fridays off), even though I doubt the sessions were hard physical affairs.

Also on the subject of the game between Jersey and Kent, I was much taken by the visitors’ No 8, who scored the first goal of the match, took all of the free kicks, and was eventually sent off for continually haranguing the referee.

He deserved to go. In the first half, for example, a fairly innocuous tackle saw him howling, and lying on the ground, as if in terrible pain. Once the free kick had been awarded and one of the Jersey play-makers had been yellow carded, however, he immediately climbed back to his feet as if nothing had happened.

His antics continued in the second half as, gradually, the crowd and the players began to realise that for all of his undeniable footballing talents, his ham acting ability was equally as impressive.
What intrigued me most were the sounds he would make as he fell to the ground, crying out in ‘pain’. Even seasoned professionals don’t make that much noise when they’re clutching their leg and protesting ‘foul’.

The same player was quick to react when one of his team-mates was thought to be fouled, and he was eventually sent off by referee Lloyd Rendell, for: ‘two examples of an aggressive attitude, followed by a red.’

So after the game I spoke to Jersey manager Dave Walsh and said that he must have been incensed by the No 8’s attitude to the game.
Walsh, though, was phlegmatic. ‘Our players have to walk away from a situation like that, and concentrate on the game in hand,’ he said. ‘It happens at all levels in football. You just have to get on with it.’

And he’s right, of course. And, from a bystander’s point of view, No 8 was a half-decent player. But to have ‘learnt’ how to appeal in such a seemingly honest and earnest way, at such a young age, made me recognise that it isn’t entirely the Kent No 8’s problem. For who has he learnt the injury trick from? – Arguably senior players who have made the crime of crying ‘foul’ something of an artform.

All of which makes me wonder whether British football would (for a host of different reasons) actually benefit if, for the next ten years, the game was banned from being shown on telly or was broadcast in black and white with no replays. When I was a kid, that’s how we used to watch it. Now TV pundits, constant replays, slow motion colour pictures (including blood) and watching the game from all kinds of different angles allow us to criticise referees who don’t have the same opportunity and have to make split-second decisions while footballers can act up, in dramatic style – all for the sake of the camera.