The 36th Jersey Festival of Football, for Under 11 District Schools’ FA Representative teams, was held on the island from 10th to the 17th April 2010. This year 10 teams took part in the Festival: Barking and Dagenham, Chiltern and South Bucks, Felling, Gloucester, Hackney, Orpington, Plymouth, South Birmingham, Thurrock, and of course Jersey themselves.
Matches were played from Sunday to Thursday on a league basis with Friday used for play-off matches. All games were at the Florence Boot Playing Fields, Jersey’s “Wembley.”
Geoff Thompson, the previous Chairman of The FA, along with a delegation form FIFA attended the Festival on the Thursday morning and went away impressed by what they saw.
The Festival was extremely well co-ordinated by the Jersey Secretary, Pat Cullinane, now looking ahead to the organisation of his 40th Festival in 2014. David Downs (Reading Schools’ FA) acted as the official Child Welfare Officer, and worked overtime in making the arrangements to return the boys safely to England after the cancellation of all their return flights in the wake of an eruption from the Eyjafjallajokull volcano in Iceland
Many familiar faces were in attendance including John Larter (Team Manager of Hackney), Bob Owen (Gloucester), Paul Sutton (Chiltern and South Bucks) and Dave Moore (Barking and Dagenham). It was good to see several younger faces – Mark Cross (South Birmingham), Andy Allsop (Felling), and Darren Stewart (Plymouth).
The smart appearance of many of the sides both on and off the pitch was a very noticeable feature of the week.
This annual event has announced its 2011 dates – 9th to 16th April 2011
