Comment from the

Why home comforts count for so much

FOR a team who had lost their semi-final 3-2 against Ben Rhydding, Jersey’s Ed Daubeney was surprisingly cheerful.
‘We could have won, or at least tied. We had enough chances,’ he said after the Yorkshire team had prevented Investec Jersey reaching the final of the Hockey Association’s Veterans’ Plate. ‘But there’s always next year.’
I wonder if Ed would have been so cheerful if this had been an under-18s game, when you usually have only one or two bites at the cherry and, being a teenager, you become moody and blue if your team is knocked out.
For veterans do have (depending on how fit they are) time on their side. If you’re under-18, under-21, under-25 or even under-30, you’re always expected to win something not tomorrow, but now. Once you hit 45, however, you tell yourself you have at least the next ten years to win a competition – more if the knees don’t go.
But it wasn’t Ed’s optimism for the 2008-9 season which kept us talking for another five minutes (during which time Ed had more than enough time to talk to me or, indeed, to write his autobiography as his flight had been delayed virtually
all that day), it was a decision we both came to: that playing out of
the Island is usually the equivalent of starting any match, in any
tournament, a score behind.
A month ago this was true in rugby at Hayward’s Heath when, with less than 15 minutes played, the home side scored against a static JRFC defence. This wasn’t because Jersey were worst than the current London South II table-toppers; it was because they didn’t have enough time to acclimatise, to get used to a strange pitch and, mentally, to be fully prepared for the game.
And in talking to Ed, I reeled off another half-dozen sports this year in which Jersey have conceded an early score playing away from home which in turn has meant that
if they’ve gone on to win they’ve done so only when they’ve come
to terms that they are not playing
in Jersey.
Of course it could be said that visiting teams have the same problem when they fly here. Home advantage, when you aren’t used to flying in and out of an Island, can make a huge difference to your attitude and to your preparation and to the first 20 minutes out on the pitch.
However, as most Island sports are well aware, if we want UK sides to travel here, we normally have to foot the bill. Either that, or we play away.
Of course there are many advantages to living in an Island, including beaches, surf, creamy milk and my Sunday afternoon thrift club at the Lamplighter.
But our sportsmen and women are punished at times because of the stretch of water between here and the UK. I hope that next year our men’s veteran hockey team get to a national final. If not? ‘Well, there’s always next year ...’
As you are allowed to say when you reach veteran status.

Horses for courses – as nature intended

McElvey was the only horse in the Grand National to have to be put down at Aintree on Saturday, but in all three horses were killed in this year’s Grand National meeting. A total of 38 animals have died at Aintree since 1997, 11 in the main race itself.
Now much as I admire animal welfare campaigner Bridget Murphy, who was in St Helier on Saturday handing out leaflets on behalf of the Animal Aid charity to raise awareness of the cruelty of horse raising, I don’t want the Grand National ever to stop.
First, from my conversations with jockeys over the years, most (if not all) of the horses actually like jumping and, if they’re good enough, winning.
Second, many of the horses are spoilt rotten. Compared to many pets I know, they are perfectly groomed, are fed extremely well and are also kept remarkably fit.
Third, if we banned horse-racing, the population of horses would dramatically decrease. If you can’t race them, what use are they in an age of planes, trains and motor cars?
And finally, a point that was actually made on Saturday by a breeder. ‘Yes, of course it was sad that McElvey died, but then the average life expectancy of a steeplechaser is at most a third of us human beings. Like it or not, horses don’t live as long as we do. That’s nothing to do with humanity. That’s simply the way that nature intended it to be.’

Never too young to learn...

I love Daniel Halksworth’s outlook on life. He’s always been a feisty competitor, and the former De La Salle student finished 15th in the Men’s Elite class of the Mekong River ITU Triathlon in Thailand last weekend.
But what else makes him worth mention this week? It is how he continues to learn, and continues to teach himself how to learn.
For Daniel has come to triathlon on the back of a tremendous career in swimming, plus an Island Games half-marathon. It was at the latter that he was asked to run (he wasn’t there as a runner, but as a swimmer). His response: ‘I can do that!’. And he did.
But I digress: Daniel hates to lose and hates to let himself down, which is why I was taken by what he said after the Mekong River Triathlon: ‘I’m starting to learn how to race like a triathlete and not like a swimmer. This race has been a big step up for me and I narrowly missed out on winning some world cup ranking points.’
Despite his apparent longevity in sport (like most swimmers, he began when he was very young), Daniel is only 22. You don’t peak in triathlon until you’re in you’re late 20s or early 30s. So I reckon Daniel has time on his side.
But it was that: ‘I’m starting to learn how to race like a triathlete’ which swung it for me.
Daniel is a cheerful, have-a-go-at-anything type of competitor, and he hates not so much to lose, but to let himself down if he thinks he should have done better.
Jersey doesn’t have many
22-year-old triathletes. I look forward to his progress in future races with interest

A model lesson on how to lose with good grace

St Paul’s won the Wheway Cup on Saturday in a game that could easily have gone either way, but to my mind Trinity manager Joe Morley came out of the game with a huge amount of respect afterwards because of the way he took the 1-0 defeat.
‘St Paul’s had one chance and took it. That was the difference between the two sides,’ he said.
He praised his team’s endeavour, but -– and this is the point to this brief moment of comment – he also praised Craig Leitch’s stunning 35th minute shot from the edge of a crowded penalty area.
Now in my experience you can always tell when a goal’s that good, because for a very brief moment afterwards both sets of supporters sit in stunned silence. And that was true at Springfield on Saturday, before the St Paul’s fans began cheering.
As for Joe, there were no complaints about his side’s defeat. He knew it had been a tremendous shot on goal and that, really, is the making of a cup final – any cup final. A goal fit to grace any stadium in the world rather than a miserly toe poke in a scrambled mess in front of the line.
I’m not saying I particularly enjoyed the game, but the goal that won it? That’s an entirely different matter, which Joe had grace and dignity enough to admit to the media.