DON’T believe all that ‘it’s too hot’ tosh coming from the GFA board. They have kicked their players in the teeth over Rhodes for one main reason: they don’t trust the safety measures in place in the Greek island.

I just wish they would come out and say it, otherwise it will give ammunition to those who believe that: a) they have totally lost their marbles; or b) it’s a blatant act of retaliation for the events at the Corbet Field on Tuesday 1 July 2003.

I’d like to give those on the board who voted to keep the footballers away from Rhodes – it was by no means unanimous – the benefit of the doubt and that it is a combination of heat and threat from the locals that was their reason for wrecking the short-term ambitions of the island’s top players. But I have great difficulty in doing so.

For a start, since when did the GFA executive become weather experts?

How can they guarantee that the heat will be too much for our boys when it just might be that it could rain the week of the Games?

And why is it they are prepared to allow our teams to play a gruelling schedule of games in Aland in the summer of 2009 when it’s quite feasible that the temperatures could top 30C? It gets hot in Scandinavia, too.

As this summer’s World Cup in Germany proved, rarely can you be certain of the weather.

This latest GFA ‘faux pas’ ranks with some of their classics of modern times. Their silence on the issue is also deafening.

I certainly hope that the players and team management dig in their heels and fight the rejection all the way.

They will have the footballing public on their side, not to mention the vast majority of the island’s footballing fraternity.

I’m surprised Steve Ogier hasn’t had the courage of his convictions and openly criticised the decision.

If I were the coach, I would have already told the GFA exactly what they could do with their island football team and find someone else to work his socks off in an attempt to prepare a squad that would, unless the decision were reversed, be demotivated to such an extreme that they might refuse to dig into their pockets and travel to South-West Counties games.

ROBIN ROUSSEL, who died this week, was a master batsman.

The dozen caps he won for Guernsey between 1957 and 1971 could have been many more had the Cobo great committed himself to the game beyond the age of 35.

As far as this writer is concerned, ‘RCN’ played the greatest-ever evening league innings – 88 not out – to single-handedly sink Rovers in the late 1960s. Rovers rarely lost in those years, but on this occasion they were taken apart by as stylish a batsman as I’ve seen locally.

As he eased into top gear in the closing overs, Robin time and again put his left leg down the track and, with perfect timing, lofted the ball high over the mid-wicket boundary and through the tops of the trees which nowadays stand next to the net area at the KGV.

All with a borrowed and battered club bat with a middle the size of a pea.

When old enough to play, I had the pleasure in the early 70s of witnessing his brilliance from 22 yards away in one of the then very rare Afternoon League games he played.

On a good grass strip at the Memorial Field and with mighty Rovers again the opposition, I arrived at the wicket to be given the simple orders of ‘stay there and give me the strike’.

I witnessed a master-class as Robin reached three-figures. My own contribution was very few, such was his utter dominance.

I will remember him as a wonderful player, later a very fine coach and, always, a superb sportsman and a real gentleman.