CORAL were, this week, said to be offering odds of 100 to 1 for Andy Priaulx to be crowned 2007 BBC Sports Personality of the Year. Money, indeed, has been placed on the three-times world touring car champion.
But surely someone at Coral has left a couple of noughts off those odds.
Even if the entire island were to wager a quid each on Priaulx to be standing alongside a grinning, super-tanned Gary Lineker to receive the famous old trophy in front of millions of viewers, he would still not make even the shortlist.
Sure, the man is worthy of the highest national sporting honours, but there is no chance of Priaulx being touted as a serious candidate. On past evidence, he will be lucky even to get a studio audience invitation.
His profile and, more importantly that of world touring cars, simply is not big enough for the Beeb.
Lewis Hamilton is a sure-fire winner in my book, although I would not vote for him.
It would also be interesting to see he and Priaulx pitted against each other in similar racing cars.
Priaulx, surely, should be driving F1. He is plainly good enough and has been desperately unlucky not to have been given the chance, let alone an extended opportunity.
Consistently the story has been that our man does not have the financial backing to make the F1 circus and is too old anyway at 33.
I struggle to understand the age thing, my eyes coloured by some of those wonderful old ESPN Classic half-hour specials on F1 at a time when spectacular crashes, daring passing manoueuvres and the regular fatality made the formula exciting. Not the anaesthetised dross we see today.
Back in 1970, there did not appear to be a whippersnapper in sight as the venerable Aussie legend Jack Brabham took the South African GP laurels at Kyalami.
Brabham was 44 and among his rivals that hot day, Graham Hill, 41, and John Surtees, 36.
Jim Clark, in my eyes still the best racing driver of all, would have been 34. Trouble was, though, he was dead, killed behind the wheel, which happened a lot in that period.
The point is, though, that age did not seem to matter, unlike now when the promoters are hell-bent on locking onto a bright young talent and throwing enough money at him to clear Guernsey’s Zero-10 black hole.
It worked with Hamilton, but what about all the other new kids on the block of recent times?
Can you tell me that had Priaulx been given the same opportunities as Jensen Button, he would not have matched Button on the track?
SO IT seems we will be well into 2008 when - finally - we get to hear the GFA’s blueprint for local football.
A GFA press release this week confirmed that it would be May before they submit their ‘National Game Strategy’ to the FA for consideration.
By then everyone in the local game will have been consulted. Because of that, I do not expect much to change.
On Guernsey United, I suspect there will not be the collective stomach to fight its cause, but would be delighted to be proved wrong.
FULL marks to those in CI rugby who came up with the plan to bring the two island academies together for the purposes of training and fostering relations.
Brilliant idea and one which can only help the best young Sarnians as GRUFC struggle to stay on the coat-tails of the most ambitious sporting organisation in the Channel Islands, the Jersey Rugby Club.
And who would have thought it, just two or three seasons after the two clubs were at odds following a nasty incident on inter-insular day.
The recriminations, seemingly, went on for a long while with threat of legal action against a Guernsey player and talk, possibly of the loose variety, of Guernsey refusing to play junior games against the reds.
The dispute proved to be the watershed from which inter-club relations have grown to what they are today.
The new coaching link makes sense and for our junior rugby it would seem that the next sensible step is to introduce a full-time development officer.
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