ONE thing for certain with regard to Mark Le Tissier’s imminent departure from the Guernsey Football Association is that football won’t know just quite how splendid he has been for the game until he is gone.

But I cannot believe, for one minute, we have seen the last of ‘Sticks’ from football administration and it will be a surprise to me if the elder of the most famous footballing family Guernsey has ever had does not re-emerge as a leading light in Guernsey FC.

That Le Tissier has been, and still is, so actively involved in the necessarily long-winded setting up of the single biggest sporting development this island has seen in a century of organised island sport, I refuse to countenance the thought that he will not have a prominent role to play as GFC take to the UK pitches next season.

He is too talented and influential an administrator just to give it all away at the summer annual meeting of the GFA.

Le Tissier has been a godsend to the local game.

Without his efforts and level-headed approach, made easier by the fact that he has seen football from so many sides as a top player, top referee, county secretary and board member, football would be in a right mess.

EIGHTEEN months of fairly relentless efforts by the island’s top footballers was always going to have repercussions and we are seeing it with players going off the boil and, in the case of at least one, saying enough is enough for now, ‘I’m too busy’.

Tony Vance announces his match-day squad for next week’s Kleinwort Benson Muratti semi-final on Monday and it will be intriguing who he includes given that a couple of key players have already signalled they will not be going to the Isle of Wight for this summer’s NatWest Island Games and the emergence of new serious contenders for a first-team start, including the return to the local scene of Ryan-Zico Black.

Plainly, some players are under-performing and have been for a while. They need a rest and, were it me picking the 18 to travel up to Alderney, I would be freshening things up with a few changes to remind those who need reminding that playing for the island first team is not a god-given right just because of the glories of last year’s FA National League System Cup triumph and Croatia that followed.

Vance, I suspect, is going to be loyal to those who did so well for him last season and resist significant changes, such as bringing back Black so soon after his return to the local arena.

Black will surely return at some point, but probably not until next season when his experience as a semi-pro will be important in a weekly UK league campaign and by then he will be at optimum fitness.

Just how much Vance is prepared to tinker with his side we will see in the coming days, but I do expect at least one new face in the starting team for Alderney and that will be Angus Mackay.

With a knee injury sidelining him for much of the season, the man brought to the island to spearhead the Tics challenge is fresh and fairly flying in North colours.

What you get with Mackay is a player who rivals Joby Bourgaize for incredible versatility as he has demonstrated for his new club in recent weeks.

He oozes class and he has to play.

I also suspect it will be in his favoured position – one he has yet to play locally – right back.

Another who deserves to come in to the squad against Alderney is young Northerner Scott Bougourd.

A place on the bench would be the right place to introduce him to the senior squad, but the problem facing the 20-year-old is that he plays in a position that Vance has no end of choices, including Piers Ockleford, who has slogged his way through a club campaign in a Rangers side that has, by and large, seriously disappointed.

I would find room on the bench for Ockleford for the game against Alderney and omit two of the championship-winning Saints squad.

As good player as he is, Scott Bradford has not impressed me enough since his switch from Bels, while after coming back strongly for the Uefa Regions Cup campaign, Matt Warren has again struggled with injuries that have taken the edge from his game.

I would go to Alderney without the pair.

Both could come back in contention for the inevitable final against Jersey, but to my mind they need to show more in Saints’ run-in to earn their places amid the wealth of midfield options.

As for a second goalkeeper, were I Vance by now I would have sat down with Lee Savident and discussed the extent of his commitment to football and training, because there is no doubt in my mind the former Hampshire cricketer, who has won the first-team gloves at Northfield, is better than anyone bar Chris Tardif.

Whether Savident wants or is able to make that commitment I can only second guess, but the ability is there.

My team and bench to play Alderney:

(4-2-1-3)

Chris Tardif (St Martin’s); Angus Mackay (North), Tom Strawbridge (St Martin’s), Sam Cochrane (North), Olly McKenzie (North); Ben Coulter (St Martin’s), Alex Le Prevost (North); Glyn Dyer (North); Ross Allen (Rangers), Dominic Heaume (St Martin’s), Craig Young (Bels).

Subs: Lee Savident (North), Jamie Dodd (St Martin’s), Jacques Isabelle (Rangers), Scott Bougourd (North), Simon Tostevin (North), Piers Ockleford (Rangers), Joby Bourgaize (Bels).

MANY an old Grammar boy, like myself, will have been sad to read about the death of Ian Curle this week.

‘Flash’, as we lovingly called him, was not the best sports teacher that ever walked this island – I think he saved his best for his gardening passion – but he certainly was an

absolutely lovely fellow who we all thought so highly of because of his gentle manner and his capability to amuse everyone by his sheer forgetfulness.

Countless times he would strike his forehead with his right hand and utter two words: ‘Oh no’.

He had come without a ball, a whistle, boat tickets, or something.

We loved him for it and I could write a whole chapter on Mr Curle’s relaxed approach to PE teaching, but he was fun to be around.

It is often forgotten just how capable a sportsman he was himself, most notably as a middle and long distance runner who showed real quality in the first golden period for local athletics.

Anyone who was able to defeat Dave Kreckeler in a long distance race was no mug and Ray Hollis, the island’s foremost athletics statistician and author of the sport, tells me that it was Ian Curle who inspired him to take up the sport in which he himself became so pre-eminent.

The event was the 1954 Open Championships at the College Field when his 880 yards race with D. T. A. Davis was the highlight.

Curle pushed Davis to a then new island record of 2min. 1.7sec., the runner-up being just inches and one tenth adrift at the line.

‘He wore his dark blue Loughborough vest and it was such an epic that it stayed in my mind. I thought then that’s what I want to do,’ recalled Hollis this week.

‘In his time he was one of the top Guernsey athletes,’ he added.