I’M getting my retaliation in first.

Before I hear anyone tell me Heather Watson is finished or was a flash in the pan and never was going to make it as a professional tennis player, can I speak up for the young lass.

She is not the first player to struggle on clay and many great players in the long history of the game, have never got to grips with the red stuff.

Winning on clay has stumped great players throughout the history of the game, including Roger Federer, who has yet to win the Gallic grand slam.

And, as a quick glance through the list of French Open winners list shows, many players who have triumphed on the clay of Roland Garros have done relatively little on the faster surfaces which our Heather clearly prefers.

The lists include a raft of players who have won the title when unseeded and in the recent ITF junior tour clay events, including the Italian and French junior singles, seeds have fallen faster than the temperature at the Mont Cuet hotspot.

This week in Paris neither of the top two seeds in the girls tournament made it past the second round and by the quarter-finals the four remaining seeds in the last eight were ranked three, nine, 11 and 15. The rest had come from nowhere.

The boys were much the same.

The number one seed crashed out in the first round and, of those who reached the last eight, just three had been seeded and two of those were outside the top 10.

At least Heather has enjoyed a good run in the doubles and by so doing was the last remaining Brit in the four junior competitions.

She has done herself and the island proud, yet again, so the message is clear: don’t give up on our Commonwealth Junior champion just because of a few early exits on a surface which produces boring tennis anyway.
WELL done to Ross Allen for his double win at Thursday evening’s annual GFA football awards.

He was, undoubtedly, the top performer of 2008-09 and what makes his award more deserving in my eyes was his reluctance to accept that playing at local level, with the Muratti final a once-a-year bonus, should be the high point of his career.

I gather he still craves to make a living out of the game and has eyes on openings in America where his father, Craig, achieved so much.

Should he be lost to the local game we will be one fewer quality striker, but we should all wish him luck.

EVENING cricket at the top level still has its diehards, the men who refuse to give into time and, for the sheer love of the game, ignore the aching limbs and strains to keep going.

But, and this is really good news for the domestic game, there have never been so many youngsters playing in Evening League Division One.

It’s great to see and I’m sure just the start of things to come as the Guernsey Cricket Youth Development Committee’s hard work and planning fully kicks in.