SEEING Dave Rihoy running the Sylvans defence ragged at St Peter’s last weekend got me thinking.

This may be good for Bels and their supporters but it is not a good sign for local football.

The island’s top forwards are ruling too much and you only have to look at the top of the Division One scoring charts to see that an awful lot of cheap goals are being scored.

It may be good for the individual, good for his team, but not clever for the game as a whole and it does not help raise the standard of the Guernsey game.

Rihoy (pictured) has already hit 21, Saints’ Marc McGrath 18 and Rangers’ Ross Allen 16. At this rate they will all get close to their half-century for the season and that just should not be so.

Clearly these three are having things far too easy, too often.

The proof of that, surely, is Guernsey’s shortage of goals in recent games against Jersey [Murattis and Island Games showdowns] when faced with highly-organised, faster, fitter and more tactically aware defenders. The men who rip Sylvans, North, Tics, Rangers and Rec apart, don’t get a look in, certainly on the scoresheet.

McGrath, for all his goals in club football, does not even win a place in Tony Vance’s island squad, which must be a clear indication in itself.

Further proof that something is amiss with our defensive game is when arguably the two best teams – well they currently sit one and two in the table and were in those positions last year – produce a 7-5 scoreline.

Entertaining? Yes, but clearly there is something amiss when that sort of score happens.

Could it be those two sides are blessed with poor defenders or is it a lack of tactical nous from the coaching teams?

I will let you come up with your own answer to that one.

What I do know is that Bels would be half the side they are without their free-scoring and elusive No. 7. and the blue-and-whites are reliant on one individual far more than their title rivals.

Saints can mask the absence of McGrath because, of all the domestic squads, Colin Fallaize has comfortably the best and deepest one to choose from.

North, meanwhile, do not rely on an individual and have a variety of attacking outlets as well as a fixation to attack, attack, attack.

Guernsey’s back four against the Southern Amateur League will probably read, from right to left, Darren Martin, Alex Le Prevost, Sam Cochrane and Joby Bourgaize.

The established alternatives are not bad either – Olly McKenzie on the left, Tom Strawbridge and Michael Wilson down the middle. And right back? Well.

The trouble is that they all play for the ‘haves’ at the top of the top of the table and that is part of the problem.

They could do with coming up against a Rihoy or an Allen every week to be seriously tested and if they had to then their club coaches might have to focus more on defensive patterns.

The only patterns seen in the last North-Bels clash was one full of holes.

Don’t get me wrong I will always want to see the Rihoys of this world come out on top, but he should be made to work harder more regularly than he is.