This Is Guernsey

Hero of the early hours, Adam Shorto. (Picture by Steve Sarre, 0425918)

AS NICKNAMES go, they don’t come much more tongue-in-cheek than Adam Shorto’s.

The island snooker champion is not much thicker set than the cue he uses. So what moniker has he been given? Sumo. Yet in the early hours of Sunday morning, he again proved it to be an apt tag because he is undoubtedly a heavyweight of the Channel Islands snooker scene.

One week later and on arguably the biggest weekend of the local sporting calendar, we can but hope that our footballers and rugby players show just a modicum of the character Shorto, and for that matter his teammates, did against the auld enemy.

In all fairness, should Guernsey suffer defeat in either the Muratti or the Siam, I also hope they have the grace to lose with the dignity that Jersey did at the Gremlin Club.

Credit where it is due, captain Aaron Canavan and the rest of the Caesarean quintet were terrific ambassadors for their island and the sport, offering their sincere congratulations to the victors immediately after having been beaten in the most agonising of ways – a sudden-death play-off.

Make no mistake about it, holders Jersey were definite favourites to retain the cup.

A week earlier, three of their team had been in the 147 CVS side who had beaten Gremlin Galacticos, also providers of a trio of inter-insular players.

That result had come the day after Canavan had beaten Shorto in the individual CI final.

The latter had also been involved in Guernsey’s narrow defeat in the billiards inter-insular in a disappointing period of little more than 24 hours.

To then find himself in a sudden-death play-off frame on his debut as island snooker captain, Shorto could have been forgiven if he had frozen when taking on Gary Britton at the end of a nerve-racking night.

Instead, what followed was a demonstration of calmness and calculated precision that made every Sarnian in that room extremely proud.

It would be wrong not to mention Glenn Le Prevost, Adrian Lihou, Graham Peel and John Skillett, who all showed fighting qualities worthy of the winners’ medals they received at approaching 1.30am.

Admittedly, the quality never reached anywhere near the heights of the island final between Shorto and Martyn Desperques, who was unavailable for the inter-insular, but it was engrossing stuff nonetheless.

Still the Guernsey captain felt the need to apologise to this reporter on more than one occasion for the match having lasted almost exactly six hours.

That is typical of the man.

But I would like to take the opportunity to reiterate publicly my apology to him.

A spur-of-the-moment observation of mine to Shorto that ‘this has got sudden-death written all over it’ was blurted out mindlessly with the score at 3-3, immediately to be regretted when I realised he was obviously going to be the man Guernsey turned to in such an eventuality.

I need not have worried, though, because Sumo rose to the occasion in admirable fashion.

I hope  we will be able to say the same of many more Sarnians after this weekend.