IT’S official, folks. We have gone soft.

Well, most of us have.

I exclude Lee Merrien, who in the depths of Britain’s biggest freeze for many a long year, did his Scott of the Antarctic bit and successfully reached snowy Edinburgh last Saturday to run in the BBC televised Bupa Great Edinburgh International Cross-Country.

And didn’t he do well?

Meanwhile, back in the snowy depths of Guernsey – I joke – the sporting programme is wiped out completely.

The police reckon it is simply too dangerous for any of us to get out on the roads and all sport should be called off.

We’ve got to think of our ’elf and safety’.

All too meekly, hockey and football follow their advice and not a ball is kicked or struck in anger anywhere.

Rugby, with some justification given the uncertainty over our airport, decide to take the weekend off, too, as do the best CI indoor bowlers, who decide to leave it for a week.

GFA’s fixtures secretary Garry Cortez said they were in a ‘no win’ situation and to a certain extent he was right.

The crux of his argument was: put the games off and everyone will moan they should have been on.

Allow them to go ahead, someone breaks a leg and the ambulance has to slip and slide its way down to the northern end of the island to pick up the poor fellow, and the GFA will be roundly criticised.

Meanwhile, four perfectly playable football grounds lay unused at the Track, Corbet Field, Northfield and Port Soif.

But, I respectfully ask, why should the police have a say in whether four run-of-the-mill league fixtures should go ahead or not?

It is not as if we are talking of thousands of fans attempting to reach large stadiums surrounded by ice, as was the case in England.

For those living south of the Sarnian equator the postponement was possibly well received news. Roads in the upper parishes were hairy.

But, the important point surely, is that they were far from being impassable and, anyway, have our sportsmen lost the use of their legs?

Can we not walk a few miles to get to a game?

At worst, the walk could replace the pre-match warm-up.

We can send someone to the Moon yet we are seemingly incapable of arranging pick-ups and make use of possibly the highest per capita availability of 4x4s anywhere in the world.

I cannot help conclude we pay too much attention to weather forecasts, which are often wrong, and simply we are less hardy than our predecessors.

Forty-seven years ago British sport was in the midst of its worst freeze ever.

The FA Cup third round lasted 66 days. Sixteen of those third round ties were postponed 10 or more times.

One game in the Scottish Cup was on and off on 33 occasions.

Guernsey felt the chill too.

A waterfall at Petit Bot froze over (see picture), but the brave Priaulx League footballers consistently turned out to play their games throughout January.

They simply got on with it. Football matches were there to be played – even on Boxing Day.

THE awards season hits us next week.

The Sports Commission host the annual Guernsey awards and, a week later, it is the turn of the Sportingbet Channel Islands celebration of sport down Jersey way.

What odds on a Heather Watson clean sweep?

Despite the excellence of the likes of the unrelated Merriens – Lee and Alison – Jeremy Frith, Lucy Beere, Dale Garland and many more, the efforts of our outstanding young tennis starlet surely cap the lot.

I know it was at junior level, but the competition is no less fierce among the under-18s than it is among the senior women when it comes to a tennis world where the old Empire countries have been largely blown away by the extent of the East European take-over.

The only uncertainty when it comes to Heather Watson is just how far she will go in the game?

I know she won’t settle for wild-card entries and early exits from Wimbledon which has been the norm for British women in recent times, but to be a real contender for the senior Slams is asking an awful lot.

In supporting this huge talent we need to be realistic and patient.