Slaughter at St Peter underlines the new gulf

Monday 16th May 2011, 2:29PM BST.

Jersey scrum half Brendan O’Brien jigs inside Andy Bailey (left) and Cameron Hayton as the Guernsey defence is sliced open for the umpteenth time at St Peter where the home club inflicted a record Siam Cup loss on the visitors of 73-5. (Picture by David Ferguson, 1136350)

Jersey 73, Guernsey 5
NOT only did Jersey retain the Siam Cup in front of a crowd of over 3,000 at St Peter on Saturday, they also set a new inter-insular record.

Stretching back to the first Siam, which Guernsey won 6-3 in 1935, the only comparable result to this complete domination was Guernsey 3, Jersey 69 at Foote’s Lane in 1997.

Both coaches, Jersey’s Ben Harvey and Guernsey’s Jordan Reynolds, accepted that this was very much a tale of two teams who are leagues apart.

‘To match them at this level is difficult for us. In all honesty, Guernsey have to raise their grade to play against a team like Jersey. So on the whole, I think we did well,’ said Reynolds.

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1
Gerald Largo

May 17, 2011 at 9:32 am

I am more of a football man than an ‘egg chaser’ but this score shows what a waste of time inter island sport is becoming as sports move into UK leagues. Surely it is time for Muratti’s where sports compete in UK leagues to become Island born players only otherwise these slaughters will continue and people will lose interest. This is just spoiling the rivalry between the islands and making it a farce. I suggest that although the Jersey side will be pleased with the win the bulk of them will not even think about the passion of being involved in a Muratti as they have much bigger fish to fry – a waste of everyones time and money

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2
tim yeats

May 17, 2011 at 10:25 am

I will see what happens in the next couple of years before stating that the Siam cup needs to be changed; but it does not look good.

Guernsey have been stuffed before but the next year done much better

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3
Dave Watson

May 17, 2011 at 1:22 pm

Why not review all muratti matches with a view to adopting a true ‘international fixture’ status, ie. only allow locally born players to take part.

It would stop the increasing influx of off-island players we’re seeing in most sports & would provide better incentives for the locally born players to stick with their sports.

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4
Gerald Largo

May 17, 2011 at 5:59 pm

Dave Watson, that is exactly what I said. I totally agree it is time to stop anyone who is not born in their respective Islands, or at least to have been totally schooled there, to represent their island in any Muratti. At the moment the games are only Muratti’s in name, they are no longer Guernsey vs Jersey they are instead Guernsey vs Scotland, Ireland, Portugal, etc… how can anyone expect Guernsey to compete against all of these nations? How many actual Jersey people live in Jersey these days???

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5
Jersey

May 19, 2011 at 8:46 am

to be fair i think jersey only posted such a good side as they needed to ensure game time for all the players before the play-offs if the league had ran properly and not been disrupted by loughborough students the play offs would of been before siam cup or would of been closer to the last league game and this would of allowed jersey to have fielded a younger side like they did the previous year where they tried out more of the local talent than this year

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