IT’S the end of the Siam as we know it. Or is it?One record stuffing has dispatched rugby officials back to the bars to discuss how Jersey can be tamed and, at the same time, find a formula to preserve the competition as it was meant to be – an equal contest.

The trouble is, quite clearly and despite the modern record in which Guernsey and Jersey have posted three wins apiece in the six games prior to last Saturday, this is no longer an even contest between two clubs set up decades ago along similar lines, representing similar values and fed by similar populations and resources.

Jersey, to their huge credit, have left Guernsey behind and, unless the JRFC headquarters at St Peter is shaken by an earthquake, they plainly are not going to come back towards us in the foreseeable future.

Like those beautiful balloons once sung about by The Fifth Dimensions, Jersey are Up, Up and Away.

Guernsey are not going to catch them.

All week I have been trying to get my head around this Siam Cup thing and what it would mean to place handicaps on one side or the other, which is what the preliminary suggestions indicate might happen?

And when you have done the analysis, surely the only conclusion can be from a Siam that would have a set of match-day rules which handicap one club and not the other, is that the heart of the competition is punctured and as good as dead.

The Siam might not be an official inter-insular like football’s Muratti and instead a tribal battle between two age-old clubs, but it is perceived as one and perception is often as important as reality.

The Siam Cup is rugby’s Muratti, forget that other game between second-strings. That does not really count.

In rugby, this is the big one, the one that is definitive in making the annual decision as to which island is best at rugby.

It is because it is viewed as a full inter-insular that crowds the size of last Saturday’s 3,000 at St Peter are drawn, and regularly around 2,000 when the game is at Foote’s Lane.

My fear is that, as dangerous as Jersey’s impressive ambition to reach for the sky is to the future health of the Siam, even more so is the suggestion that rules will be put in place to negate Jersey’s fearsome strength and give little Guernsey a sporting chance.

Not a big one, but a chance.

In my mind, introducing handicaps must not happen.

Better, surely, would be for Guernsey to move mountains to significantly raise their own standards and/or Jersey to realise that there is no need to play all their big guns come Siam day and leave their final selection down to the generosity of the Jersey coach at the time.

But even that latter thought leaves me feeling empty at the very thought.

I always want to see the best of Guernsey play the best of Jersey, no matter where they come from originally and whether they are paid.

While a succession of results such as 73-5 will soon kill off interest in the Siam as a first-team game, so too will the knowledge that one team is, in effect, being heavily handicapped to make it a game.

What next?

Give Guernsey an agreed points start?

This is not the Norman Wale Snooker Handicap boys, it’s the Siam, for heaven’s sake.

No, the only proper solution is to leave all alone when it comes to the qualification rules – and that includes keeping the pros involved as, after all, they are part of Jersey Rugby Club – and for Guernsey to somehow come forward with a sporting plan of their own which will take them closer to Jersey and, on near-future Siam days, hope the Caesareans take us too lightly.

I fully realise it will be very difficult for Guernsey to push on in the manner of the sister isle’s superbly run club, but that must be the target.

To simply accept Guernsey can never again rival Jersey on the rugby fields would be sad and inadmissible.

Come on Guernsey, fight back with a plan.

NOT sure where or from whom Jersey Rugby Club’s inspiration to reach the top came from, but the soon-to-be-born Guernsey FC would do well to aim similarly high.

And for all those decreasing doubters of the project, may I remind them what game AFC Wimbledon are playing today and the relevance of it.

Just nine years, after angry Wimbledon fans set up the club as an alternative to losing their club to Milton Keynes and its new set of ‘Dons’, AFC Wimbledon are just one victory away from reaching the Football League having started out, where Guernsey FC will, in Division One of the Combined Counties League.

It was as recently as August 2002 that AFC Wimbledon played their first game against Sandhurst Town [these days in the CCL Premier] and should they beat Luton today in the Blue Square Premier play-off final, it would be their fifth promotion in less than a decade.

They have an average crowd of 3,500 and, thanks to 300 volunteers in a real community effort, they need just six non-playing staff to operate.

It just goes to show what can be achieved by aiming high, good management, keeping the faith and working hard.‘To simply accept Guernsey can never again rival Jersey on the rugby fields would be sad and inadmissible’