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09/5/2020 2:26 PM  #1


The remarkable season of Jersey Bulls FC

There is one step 6 football club with an average attendance of 697

They play in the Combined Counties League Division One



The Jersey Bulls: the team who won every game this season... but won't be promoted

2019-20 Record    :     P27, W27, D0, L0, GD92,  Pts 81

Jersey Bulls have a perfect record and say 'the quickest promotion in the country should be honoured. Jersey Bulls FC are arguably the worst affected by the decision to void the non-league season

“Genuinely shocked,” says Ian Horswell, the CEO of Jersey Bulls FC, summing up the response to the news that his club’s record-breaking inaugural season in English football now counts for nothing.

Arguably nowhere was the Football Association’s decision to cancel the 2019/20 season from non-league level three downwards because of the coronavirus crisis felt more keenly than on Jersey where the Bulls had outdone even Premier League champions-elect Liverpool by winning all 27 of their fixtures in Combined Counties League Division One, posting a plus-92 goal difference and securing promotion to the Premier Division with 11 games to spare.

As Horswell tells i: “We believe we should be in step five as what we’d achieved in 27 games was the quickest promotion in the country and that should be honoured.” Instead for his club and others in the rabbit warren of divisions around them, a year’s efforts have turned to dust, with promotion and relegation cancelled.

It is tempting to compare Jersey Bulls’ fate with that of a Liverpool side still waiting to seal their Premier League crown. “You’ve got two different ends of the spectrum in terms of financial firepower,” notes Horswell.

“Being a Liverpool supporter myself I sincerely hope that they do get the title,” he adds, observing that “the financial contracts associated with the Premier League are so vast and significant. ” Nine rungs below on the ladder, where the overall divisional average attendance is 40 spectators, money barely manages a whisper.

In this sense, Jersey Bulls are an exception. Although entirely volunteer-run, the newly formed club have three wealthy sponsors in CPA Global, the Butterfield Group and Powerhouse, the retail arm of Jersey Electricity, and this support has been essential given the estimated £275,000 running costs for the season, which have included not just flying manager Gary Freeman’s squad across the Channel to Gatwick every other weekend but also paying for opposition teams to fly into Jersey, where the Bulls have been drawing an average crowd of 700 spectators.

 Those journeys have now been in vain. “A great adventure” is how James Queree, the club’s 29-year-old captain describes the campaign that has been “a step into the unknown” for a group of players brought together from different clubs from the Jersey FA Combination League.

None would have foreseen this sting in the tail when promotion came on 7 March, but as the number of coronavirus cases in Jersey climbed to 46, Queree, a trainee accountant, was sanguine about it. “It got announced in the WhatsApp group yesterday,” he reflects. “There were a couple of tweets that got shared. It’s upsetting but at the same time when you put things in perspective there is a lot worse that is going on and this is just a small outcome, a small setback.”

 

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