This Is Guernsey

By Rob Batiste

Criterium racing through the mist at Delancey Park this week. (Picture by Peter Frankland, 0580466)

SHOULD football and golf fret about life in the doldrums, they could do worse than look at cricket, cycling and athletics for proof that it is possible to sail out of them.

The cricket and athletics revolution have long been gathering pace, the former due to big decision making and the opening provided by the International Cricket Council route.

Athletics have done it a different way, great community sponsorship underpinning the mantra of wider exposure to UK competition allied to a fantastic facility and making the most of the knowledge gained by Dale Garland and Lee Merrien, stars  on the national scene.

Now cycling is fizzing. Tobyn Horton, as Ian Brown did a couple of decades ago, has set his sights high and is giving it everything in a bid to be a pro cyclist, basing himself in Belgium and now attempting to win spots in big UK races with the carrot of a contract being the dream.

Horton has stirred the pot and  exciting young riders are following in his stream: James McLaughlin, Danny Arblaster and Callum Hill-Smith, the three most celebrated but only three of many fast-improving riders.

Seasoned riders are hugely excited at their potential and in September islanders will get to see dozens of top cyclists flying around the town streets in the sport’s biggest ever domestic event.

McLaughlin, Arblaster and Hill-Smith are being made aware that with a lot of hard work, allied to their natural talent, they can go places in their chosen sport just as riders from the Island Games’ most successful nation have shown time and again.

The latest Isle of Man home-grown star is Mark Cavendish, a winner of a stage of this week’s Giro d’Italia.

A few weeks ago he was joining forces with Bradley Wiggins to win the Madison for Great Britain at the world indoor championships.

His career has gone only one way since 2003 when Jersey’s Sam Kirby obligingly and foolishly raised his arms to boast an Island Games criterium race in St Peter Port and allowed Cavendish to nip in front and take gold.

Good old Jersey. They are good for something.

* THE Guernsey Football Association has missed a trick by sticking with its proposal for a 16 to 23 years development league and knocking back the clubs’  offer of giving backing to a 16 to 21 one.

If the clubs rise against it and I’m led to believe the rejection is likely to lead to a second meeting of disappointed club presidents, then the GFA has only itself to blame.

While wholeheartedly supporting the move for radical change to the old-fashioned Guernsey football ways, GFA should not forever ride roughshod over the senior clubs who are vital to the sport climbing out of its current trough.

I cannot helping thinking that there is a little naivety in some of the GFA planning.

In writing to the club this week to explain just why its proposal remains for a 16 to 23 league, the GFA issued guidelines for clubs to make the development league work.

The trouble is, historically, football clubs everywhere and at every level don’t pay much attention to guidelines. They do everything to win and will stretch rules to the limit, let alone guidelines.

If clubs are permitted to play five over-age players I daresay they might.

Allowing them to do just that and stand back and frown when they do just does not make sense.

* CHAMPIONSHIP week in golf always has a salivating effect on this writer. That is until I get down to the links, discover a need for more coats than I possess and spend half the night battling against hypothermia while hardened players waltz around in short-sleeved polo shirts.

Sadly, the weather is invariably uncharitable for this great event which for sustained intrigue is unrivalled in local sport.

It has it all. Unpredictability, tension and the bonus of being able to get up closer to the action than most sports covered in these pages.

As for a winner?

I would love to see another budding junior get his hands on the trophy, just as Jack Mitchell did in 2007, or the guy he beat in the final, Steve Mahy. I can’t helping thinking that it would be a sporting travesty if Roy’s youngest boy never wins it.