FIFTY, a hundred years from now when sports columnists and sports historians look back at the key moments of island football history, 2011 will be a year they focus on every bit as much as 1893 and the formation of the Priaulx League and, 12 years later, the first Muratti.

Guernsey FC’s acceptance into the UK fold is a momentous achievement and one I strongly believe will not only see football emerge from the sickroom but make a full recovery in the eyes of the wider sporting public.

Ever since the 1950s the Evening Press and The Star have devoted miles of column inches reporting the slow death of island football and diminishing attendances with it.

Believe me, the game has been in crisis for that long if you believe men such as Mark Bright, the old football writer for The Star, Rex Bennet, who wrote for both Star and Press, Harry Brown and others.

All sorts of schemes have been put forward to lift the game from its stupor, but decade by decade the game lost its sparkle as other sports grabbed the attention and television made the watcher ever idler.

The acceptance of GFC into the Combined Counties League is a watershed moment for the game.

Should the people of Guernsey get behind it, meaning sports-lovers and businesses, it will become the single biggest development in the history of Sarnian sport and most certainly within football.

Dave Dorey would have approved wholeheartedly, so would have Martyn Le Prevost and Jurat Corbet, football men with foresight. Now its happening, hold on for the ride it promises to be an exciting one.

People will never know or, I’m sure, appreciate the extent of the groundwork that has gone into getting GFC off the ground.

But it has been massive.

So the next time you bump into Steve Dewsnip and Mark Le Tissier, I suggest you shake

their hand and say ‘thank you’ for saving football.

Of course, there remain many doubters who worry as to what effect it will have on the established competitions.

They see it as the death knell for Division One football. To those worriers I say it will have the opposite effect, breathing new life into the sport.

Finally, there will be an apex to the previously flat-roofed island pyramid.

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But GFC is not just about the star players of today, some of whom may find that the increased commitment levels – especially to travelling – is too much for the family man.

The men behind GFC know full well that their club is every bit about the bright-eyed ambitious Corbet Cup footballers, than Sam Cochrane, Ross Allen or Dave Rihoy.

This is an enterprise for tomorrow’s footballers as much as today’s.

GFC have a professional approach which island football has never previously seen and have gleaned all the experience and advice they can in establishing the club.

They look a few miles south-east at what the Jersey Rugby Club have achieved and use that as an inspiration as to what can be achieved with an ambitious sporting business plan and by enthusing the wider community.

If GFC is half as successful as the JRUFC then it will not be in the Combined Counties League for long and scaling the highly-competitive UK pyramid.

Roll on 6 August and that first game.

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HAVING featured in the biggest convoy of CI vehicles between Poole and Lymington on the edge of the Solent yesterday afternoon, the mass Guernsey and Jersey teams should now be settled into their accommodation ahead of today’s opening ceremony of the 14th NatWest Island Games.

Which of the two main Channel Islands features highest on the medals table, the next seven days will tell. I strongly fancy it will be us.

This clearly is the best all-round team Guernsey has ever sent to a Games and while the host island is bound to be their best ever and perhaps good enough to finish top, all the islands will be looking at the green-and-whites and thinking to themselves they are the benchmark for excellence at this small island level.

Athletics, swimming, table tennis, cycling, sailing and football are notably strongly suits for us.

Badminton is stronger this time around for the return of Paul Le Tocq, as is men’s basketball with Martin Yabsley back.

And what is so encouraging, heart-warming in fact, is that so many of the island’s elite still want to compete at this level which, in many cases, is a step down from the national levels they are now accustomed to.

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TWO Guernsey footballing greats have slipped away these past weeks and while Vince Tostevin never emulated Bill Spurdle in terms of elevation into the Guernsey Sports Commission’s Hall of Fame, the career of the teak-tough old Belgrave carried more resonance with local audiences than that of the former Manchester City and Oldham professional, simply because he was here.

While Bill got to play an FA Cup final, a fantastic achievement and one rightly rewarded by the Commission in 2010, his career was followed in print and away from the gaze of armchair TV watchers.

Islanders knew he was good because he played at the highest level.

Vince was not the same quality, but hugely admired in island sporting life for the manner in which he wholeheartedly served club and island in the post-war years, through the 50s and into the 60s when his last hurrah was by helping Bels to their famous 1960 Upton Park Cup triumph.

All told, he won 14 Muratti caps and it was fitting that his cap sat atop his coffin at his recent funeral.

Vince was as tough as granite, an ever-present as Guernsey’s right-half for an entire decade.

Don Batiste, who played alongside him in the 1960 league-winning Bels side, described him as ‘a great bloke’ and ‘a proper Guern’.

It was Vince, who while picking up Don’s tomatoes, got the Muratti winger to sign for Bels and the latter always appreciated his work on the field.

‘He was a very hard tackler and the sort of player who never had a bad game. He worked so hard.

‘Throughout island football he was a very popular player and so reliable.’

Vince’s island career was at an end and he was no longer a first choice pick when Bels won that 1960 Upton.

But when ‘Budge’ Robilliard went down ill on the eve of the game, in stepped Vince to play left-back.

Typically, he didn’t let the side down.

This old legend of the game never did.

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LOCAL athletics lost one of its great followers this week after the death of Ruth Falla, aged 88.

A huge supporter of the GIAAC as well as the sport in general for more than 50 years, Mrs Falla also sponsored the annual Keith Falla Memorial Cross-Country every Easter in memory of her son, who was one of the island’s great sportsmen.