Liam McKenna is indisputably the finest men’s badminton player Guernsey has seen. On the eve of the annual island closed championships Rob Batiste speaks to the legend WERE there an annual Sports Commission award for sponsors, then Domestic Heating Services would no doubt have won it by now.

Can any other company than DHS claim to have sponsored the same annual sports event for 20 years?

But DHS and badminton seemingly fit as tightly as Liam McKenna’s front court defence when the great man reigned supreme on the Rohais and Irish courts back in 1988.

McKenna had already started his remarkable unbeaten record as island men’s singles champion when DHS began their association with the GBA and Cliff Richard was at number one with Mistletoe and Wine.

In December 1988, McKenna, 52 caps for Northern Ireland, successfully defended his title in a one-sided affair against Jeff Davies 15-6, 15-0.

In truth, it wasn’t the greatest of finals.

McKenna, as he was at the time, was in a different class to everyone else. Davies, his best mate, tried as hard as he could against his daily practice partner, but he had already played his ‘cup final’, having performed outstandingly to beat number two seed Darren Le Tissier in the semi-finals.

Three years earlier, McKenna, aged 18, had lifted his first island title.

He was to win six in a row until 1990 when he gave up at the age of 24.

Throw in his four successive senior Irish national singles titles from 1990-1993, many awesome gold medal performances at Island Games and it is easy to see why he is rated the finest male player the island has ever produced.

Twenty years on and three stones heavier, he would probably give most of the current brigade a close run for his money.

But he has no regrets about quitting the game so young.

‘Everybody said I was wrong but thankfully I made the right decision,’ he said this week.

That certainty is based on what he has seen happen to two of the UK greats of the sport, Ken Jolly and Darren Hall.

‘Ken was a European champion and a genius. Darren also a genius.

‘Now one is a pool attendant and the other drives taxis. There is no money in the game.’

McKenna knew a professional player’s life was not for him.

‘I knew my limitations and was happy to call it a day.

‘I had always wanted to be a dental technician and work for my father.’

And so he did, and he is still fixing the teeth.

Reminded of the 1988 tournament, the genial Irishman by birth (he left Northern Ireland when he was four) was swift to heap praise on Davies, the man he hammered in the singles final and partnered to the doubles title against Le Tissier and Andre Trebert.

‘I would never have progressed at international level but for Jeff Davies.

‘He used to come straight from work at the tax office, five days a week to practise with me.

‘I had already done two hours on my own at Beau Sejour at lunchtimes.

‘He had no aspirations to play at the top level but he did it out of friendship to me. There was nobody else dedicated enough or interested.

‘We played doubles together and we are still the best of friends.

‘If I hadn’t had Jeff, a Welsh international himself, I would have been stuck in a rut.’

Until his early retirement, badminton was McKenna’s life.

‘It’s all I did. The total focus was playing. It was the lifestyle. I was a full-time amateur.’

He does not mind admitting he won 80% of his matches for his native Ireland. He was good but so, too, was the whole men’s scene in Guernsey at the time.

While Sally Podger ruled the women’s game in 1988, the men’s competition was hot beneath the untouchable McKenna.

Le Tissier, Mark Leadbeater, Andy Podger, John Stuart, Keith Enevoldsen and, lest we forget, Liam’s younger brother Jim.

‘The competitiveness was there,’ said the older McKenna.

1988 was also a notable year for the then Wendy Luxon who not only partnered Sally Podger to a second successive women’s doubles crown, defeating Sarah Le Moigne and Sue Gammie in the best final of the evening 12-15, 15-10, 17-15, but it was also the year that she married Andre Trebert.

A mere 20 years on and they have produced three offspring (Emily, Jordan and David) all of whom show great signs of their parents former prowess, and could even become island champions in their own right in the fullness of time.