This Is Guernsey

By Rob Batiste

JUST as the public suffers for the mistakes of ham-fisted politicians, too often sports stars also feel the backlash of the politics that go on in island sports administration. Arguably, no local sport has suffered more from that than boxing.

Thirty years ago the Sarnia and Amalgamated ABC were at odds and at a time, as now, when Guernsey boxers needed all the bouts they could get, good ones were prevented from fighting in front of local audiences.

Poor Matt Walsh, for example, boxed most of his senior bouts in Jersey.

Long before that inter-club spat, the Guernsey and Jersey boxing authorities were at odds.

Again the boxers suffered.

The Channel Islands had their area status taken away from them and the annual CI championships became a thing of the past, as did the annual boxing ‘Muratti’ for the Cleveland Trophy.

All these years on, our top boxers are starved of regular competition and if Carl Le Tissier thinks his boys are being denied enough action on the junior football fields, then he should be thankful they don’t take up boxing.

I guess I’m not alone in wishing and hoping that boxing could step back in time, the Cleveland Trophy clash could be revived and, once a year, we could have the best of Jersey taking on our best for CI championship belts.

It would, I’m sure, lead to the ‘house full’ signs going up within hours of the tickets going on sale.

How about it promoters?

THE awards season is a couple of months away and while the people behind the Sportingbet CI Sports Personality of the Year get their thinking caps on for a suitable ’sporting hero’, the organisers of the Guernsey Sports Commission awards night will be considering additions to their hall of fame.

The hall on the Beau Sejour concourse wall now features a round dozen of Guernsey’s finest.

It would be surprising if it does not become a baker’s dozen on 30 January when Beau Sejour’s David Ferguson Hall will be packed for the next annual island awards.

But, to my mind, there remain two gaping windows on the awards wall for two of the finest sportsmen this island has ever produced.

Colin Renouf is one, Les Collins, featured so prominently in these pages yesterday, is the other.

Both men fit the four-pronged criteria - performance, inspiration, commitment and longevity.

Until now, the sporting heroes selections have all achieved on a national or international basis.

That would seemingly rule out Collins or Renouf for elevation to the hall.

But, the official criteria specifically use the words, ‘achieved something very special in sporting terms in a local, national or international event’.

The fact that the word, local, is used must surely open the door for true greats such as these two superb sportsmen.

Collins was, and I quote former GFA president Alec Le Noury, ‘a national hero’ of his time.

A record number of Muratti caps (25) spanning 1947 to 1964 and exemplary behaviour and at a time when thousands watched the local game, not the dozens who frequent our grounds today.

Collins’s performances were the talk of the island. Nearly 13,000 watched him perform at the Track in 1951.

It was a time when to be an island footballer and a match-winner such as Les was to be at the height of the local public consciousness.

Guernsey did not do celebrities in that grey, conservative era, but had they, Les would have been closer than anyone to today’s Andy Priaulx.

Arsenal wanted him and professional boxing promoters would have welcomed him with open arms.

Renouf is no less deserving.

Had he said yes to Arsenal and shone in the red-and-white of the Gooners and challenged for an England cap as some local observers reckon he had the ability to do, the ‘big fella’ would no doubt have his place on the wall now.

But, no, he chose an island life and the most distinguished of careers with St Martin’s, multiple-Upton winners of the 1960s.

But does that make him less an individual in the eyes of the ordinary Guernsey people? I think not.

As long as the word ‘local’ appears in the criteria for a place in this most prestigious and worthy of sporting acknowledgments, then stars of quality such as Collins and Renouf should be recognised.