A VERY big day for island sport. And an historic one, too.Guernsey FC, finally, gets to play its first ever game and the ‘national’ hill climb returns to, as Andy Priaulx quaintly puts it, the ‘Val Dees’.

There will, for sure, be big crowds at both. But as the organisers of the hill climb set up shop this morning along the South Esplanade, they won’t be feeling the same uneasy trepidation of their footballing counterparts and be worrying about how many will pop along over the course of the day to witness one of the most spectacular sporting events in the island sporting calendar.

Meanwhile, all day long, as probably all this past week, officials of GFC will be nervous as to how many will pay at the gate to watch a game that is largely insignificant in terms of what the final score will be – most probably an AFC Wimbledon win – but hugely important in that it marks the start of a new era of island football.

Even the mysteriously anonymous Gerald Largo, GFC’s biggest online forum critic, must be feeling a teeny sense of excitement, if only in readiness to hit the keyboard this weekend and take another stab at the most important sporting development Guernsey has seen in a hundred years.

The GFC project has been a long time coming and, for some, it has also been a painful one.

But all along, key football people have believed in it and so has local sport’s biggest sponsor: Sportingbet.

Questions such as what effect it will have on the local game, how smitten the sporting public will become with it, and how far GFC can climb the league pyramid, have answers we can only guess at.

What is most important is that football, in the wider sense, buys into the idea 100% – because if football ‘et al’ does not believe in it, then what chance is there of it truly becoming the community club it sets out to be?

That won’t happen overnight, but the signs are promising. After all, GFC is not so much about now, it is about the future.

And after years of drifting through the sporting doldrums, the island’s biggest and most popular game, finally has the vehicle to raise standards, raise public awareness and, most of all, provide those hundreds of ‘minis’ who dream of scoring important goals for big teams in big games, with a realistic opportunity to have a career beyond the humdrum Priaulx League, (which I’m delighted to see has returned to becoming just that, instead of the mind-numbingly bland Senior County Division One, a title forced on the GFA).

And while, of course, results are very important – and GFC needs to climb the ladder when the proper football starts, as opposed to this evening’s celebratory exhibition – it is all about the kids.

GFC’s players of today need to enthuse the kids, get them to believe that soon enough they will be playing week-in, week-out, in an environment which will be tough and, for the most talented, bring possible big rewards: i.e. a possible career.

That Simon Tostevin, one of the island’s top strikers, has opted out is not important.

As I have semi-seriously reminded my work colleague for some time, this was never about the likes of him, as good a footballer as he undoubtedly is.

It is about the 10, 11, 12 and 13-year-olds and even those who have yet to be conceived.

The North striker, a veteran of 28, has done the right thing in opting out now. There may be one or two other established players who may balk at the new levels of commitment, but as long as the vast majority of top footballers really want to improve their sporting performance – just like our top athletes, swimmers, cyclists, motor racers etc have long become accustomed to – then GFC will work just fine and standards will rise significantly.

So get down to Foote’s Lane tonight and all winter long to back your community team.

You don’t have to ditch your Bels, your North, your Rovers, your Rangers and so on, they will tick along nicely at a level below and make their own headlines.

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I BET there was many a diehard football fan enraged by my backpage piece of eight days ago, which forcibly suggested the Island Games is bigger than the Muratti.

But it is and to top the medals tally for the third Games in eight years was an incredible achievement.

There was, of course, a time when football did not embrace the Island Games spirit in the way other sports did, but you cannot say that now.

Tony Vance’s footballers were as whipped up by the collective spirit as as anyone.

So what do we make of our collective performance at the Games?

Can it be topped? What happened to Jersey?

In simple terms: the answers to that triple-header of questions are brilliant, probably not; and they lag behind in weight of elite performers who did not want to miss the thrill of an Island Games.

Lee Merrien could easily have ducked out. He chose not to because performing at this lesser stage is still very important to him and his club.

The same goes for Ian Powell, Tobyn Horton and James McLaughlin.

There is a highly competitive edge to Guernsey sport these days and it showed itself all over the Isle of Wight.

These are exceptional times for island sport, and while we will not always be so dominant and ahead of Jersey, our superior organisation and direction from the Sports

Commission means it will not be easy for the Caesareans to knock us off our perch.

I also tend to think that in terms of raw passion, Sarnian sport is ahead of its traditional foe.

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FOUR times Ray Lowe won the island tennis championship men’s singles.

They were at a time – the 1950s – when Kings boasted gloriously maintained grass courts and Ray certainly graced them with his skills and old wooden rackets.

But it was within golf that Ray  provided his biggest influence and to the generation of Bobby Eggo and  island captain, David Rowlinson, he was something of a legend, an inspirational character who backed young talent with regular words of support and advice, and a few bob in the pocket in return for carrying his bag.

Both Eggo and Rowlinson spoke fondly of their old friend and mentor this week, a player who, at his peak in the sixties and seventies, was

always one of Guernsey’s finest, he probably got down to a two handicap at one stage, but oddly never repeated his island tennis success on the L’Ancresse links.

‘He had a great short game and we all learned stuff from him,’ said Eggo, who added that caddying for the man was always a great laugh.

Rowlinson said Guernsey golf owed so much to the man. ‘Apart from being such a character – he was the Lee Trevino of Guernsey golf – around the club and the course, his influence on the juniors was enormous.

‘When we started out as juniors it was very difficult to get out on the course. The members did not want us on the course.

‘But the likes of Ray changed that attitude. He and others.

‘He was massively influential in changing the attitude towards junior golfers.’

Personally, as both a young reporter and then established one, Ray was always offering astute and helpful observations. He invariably did so with a smile and a chuckle and I will remember him very fondly for that.