This Is Guernsey

By Aaron Scoones

THE Guernsey Commonwealth Games Association have taken steps to try and avoid controversial selection issues for future Games. Member sports used to set their own criteria for selection.

For example a runner would have to finish a race within a certain time.

Sports would then put forward competitors to the GCGA selection committee for them to give the green light or otherwise. This process led to some controversies.

Possibly the most high-profile case concerned 800m runner Tom Druce, who met the qualifying time for the event set by the GIAAC to go to the 2006 Melbourne Commonwealth Games, but was subsequently overlooked by the GCGA selection committee.

Also some sports had been accused of setting their criteria targets too low.

So the GCGA for the next Games in 2010 in Delhi have set up a validation committee that will validate each member sport’s criteria before names are given to the selection committee.

‘The selection process for the last Games we found had some problems with it,’ said the chairman of the GCGA, Peter Sirett.

‘We felt we should revisit the whole thing and come up with a new way. It’s the same way they do it in Jersey and Scotland.

‘We now have some independent people looking at the criterias.

Mike Webber, who was a member of the selection committee, chairs the new validation group.

He says that they want to build good dialogue with the sports.

‘We were selecting people where we didn’t know enough about the sports,’ he said about the old system.

‘We’re now having an open- door policy. If we’ve got a query we want to go to them.

‘There has to be respect for the individual sports. I think we’ve got a good group of people on the committee.’

Webber is joined by former athletics star Jay ap Sion, who will act as secretary, and former Guernsey Island Games Association chairman Roy Martel.

Fellow Giga officials Mike Dean and Charlie Cottam make up the rest of the committee.

Dean has been heavily involved in the past with the running of table tennis in the island, while Cottam is an experienced athletics administrator.

The committee met for the first time recently and set up a July deadline for receipt of criteria.

Once they have been received, Webber says that the committee will meet a representative from that sport.

‘We want to get a better understanding [of the sports],’ he said.

‘And the earlier we get these criteria in place the earlier the competitors can start training.’

Webber admitted that it was going to be harder to decide qualifying standards for sports such as bowls and shooting than the likes of swimming and running events where there are set times.

Webber says that the committee along with liaising with the sport associations will undertake extensive research into the different sports as well.

‘What we are going to do is look at previous Common-wealth Games qualifying times and standards and get as much as information as we can to make our opinions,’ he said.