FOOTBALL may be the in-yer-face, day-by-day backbone to our winter sports coverage and it is hard to dispute its self-proclaimed boast that remains the biggest and most populist sport there is.

But if you ask me which sport pushes it closest in terms of popularity, I would probably have to plump for motor sport in all its many guises.

This year the Guernsey Kart and Motor Club celebrate their 50th anniversary and for some dyed-in-the-wool stalwarts it probably seems only last week that the club was set up to allow the new sport of karting to thrive on the newly-created racing circuit around the Track and complement or challenge, depending on who you were I suppose, the already well-established Guernsey Motorcycle and Car Club.

For much of that last half-century the two clubs have not exactly got on, but all through those years of acrimony motorsport competitors ignored the politics and got on with the racing and getting their thrills via the kart meetings, motocross, sprints and hillclimbs staged by the GKMC and the sand racing, hillclimbs, trials and autotests run by the GMC & CC.

Nowadays, relations between the two clubs are relatively sweet and you will even find the GKMC president Peter Jory on the GMC & CC committee, something which would have been unheard of a few years ago.

Such cooperation is not only heartening to hear about but vital if a sport is to maximise its potential.

I just wish it happened years ago, not only between these two clubs but also in boxing where the Amalgamated BC and Sarnia BC suffered a relationship that resembled Ali and Fraziers, and the island’s two swimming clubs.

One of the joys of motor sport is the camaraderie that exists within ever-fierce competition and behind the scenes where there are some outstanding administrators.

As it is Kart and Motor Club’s big year there is no more appropriate time than to single out perhaps the best and most dedicated official of them all.

Her name is Heather Robilliard, a brilliant secretary who as the years drift by becomes ever the more seen-it-all, done-it-all cuddly grandmother of her sport.

Tough, fair, respected, hard-working, knowledgeable and ever-present. That sums up Heather who will be seen in the recorders van at all GKMC events, jotting down hill or sprint times, ticking off the laps at Pleinmont and turning her head away in fear of a major mishap as the big bikes approach the kink in the bend of the Vazon quarter-mile.

There are many sporting heroes beavering away behind the scenes in local sport, but few more effectively and dependably than Heather.

Give that lady an award.

Staying with the GKMC it was good to see John Robert waxing lyrically in such unpolitically correct fashion while compering the club’s vast array of awards.

He could only get away with it at such functions and his sheer enthusiasm probably allows him to do so. Don’t stop John but watch out for Al Qaeda.

I HAVE spent much of this intriguing and appealingly competitive Division One football season thinking that whoever wins the title will probably get an Upton Park hammering from St Paul’s all stars.

But after Bels’ performance in midweek, I am starting to have second thoughts. Perhaps, they can win us the Upton after all.

It was a superb display by Ian Champion’s men  who I have consistently questioned as an effective defensive force this season. But they were very good against Rangers and I will be amazed if they do not go on to land our title. Saints’ defeat by Rangers has all but cooked their chances. Give me points and not games in hand.