OVER the years I have known many Islanders who, if they had wished to do so, could have earned a living from professional sport.

They include footballers; one of whom was scouted in Jersey and went for trials to a UK club but who kept climbing out of his landlady’s house at night to go clubbing when he should have been tucked up in bed, and another who was offered a contract but turned it down because he preferred living in St Ouen where he knew that eventually he would take over the running of his father’s farm – which, 30 years on, he now owns.

Occasionally I think of the huge potential of such Island sports men and women, and wonder what their lives would have been if they had swapped Island life for 100 per cent dedication to the sports they were good at.

Inevitably, their lives would have been very different to those they now lead; and I could name teachers, farmers, the part-owner of a golf course, two farmers and a sports psychologist who all turned their back on professional sport because they had other options to choose from.

In their youth, these were potential national standard athletes who turned down the chance to live out the dreams that so many mainland children had then, have now and will have for years to come.
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I know that if I had been offered the opportunity to play professional (ie paid) rugby union I would have jumped at the chance.

My brother Malcolm, three inches taller than me and almost twice as wide was offered a professional rugby league contract with Salford but turned it down on the advice of one of his friends who, at the time, captained the side but had had both of his little fingers surgically removed (when you’re a scrum-half the opposition like to break your little fingers because that way you can’t pass the ball cleanly. You can also do the damage when the referee is looking the other way).

His friend introduced him to Salford but then advised him against signing a contract because he knew, once he reached 30, he would have to find a ‘proper job’ because professional sport is brutal in its passing interest in you.

Once you pass your sell-by date, you are usually discarded for someone else from the next generation of enthusiastic wanna-be’s.

My brother’s friend at the time had captained his team in rugby union and rugby league for Wales. Now, however, he was in his early 30s and studying to become a teacher. ‘Keep to teaching,’ he advised my brother. ‘Otherwise you’ll have ten years in the sport and, after that, they’ll get rid of you as quick as they can and you’ll have to reinvent yourself all over again.’

And that’s what he did. He coached rugby in Australia, swapped one degree for another, and eventually became . . . an accountant. Three years older than me, he now plays veterans hockey for New South Wales and never regrets the decision he made to turn down the opportunity to play sport professionally.

I mention this because of a conversation I had a few days ago with a friend of mine, Murray Norton, who told me about the job offers he has had over the years.

At one stage, he told me, he was offered a contract to work in the media in the UK, to become a TV personality who everyone would have ‘known and loved’.

‘I was sitting with an agent who was offering me the earth, as we were drinking a glass of wine, overlooking St Aubin’s Bay, on a day just like this,’ Murray told me (it was a balmy Saturday afternoon, with St Aubin’s looking at its glorious best).

‘And I thought about his offer, while sipping my glass of Chablis and enjoying my food before saying: “So what you want me to do is to join the London Rat Race, to work flat out for 25 years, to earn enough money to buy a house in an Island paradise which I could then retire to and where I could spend a leisurely lifestyle in my last few years in a house overlooking the sea, eating moules and drinking a decent bottle of Chablis”.’

Murray paused a minute, and gestured across the bay. ‘But why do I have to wait 15 or 20 years?’ he said. ‘When that’s the life I’m living now?’

For those who don’t know, in his earlier days Murray was a very good, aggressive rugby player. He gave the sport up only after they’d broken his nose for the second time.

But the reason why I mention his name in this sports column is because, like so many Islanders in the past, when he had the chance to swap his Island lifestyle for that of a lifestyle on the mainland, he said ‘no’ and remained in Jersey.

Money, obviously, has mattered to him, as has a career which could have seen him on national TV or radio. But then the Island sportsmen and women I have known who have turned down the option of moving to the UK have largely declined the offers they were given, for similar reasons to Murray.

For there aren’t many better places to live than in Jersey, especially if you have the ability to do more than kick a ball or run very fast.