ANDREW WINNIE has not given up hope of a miraculous last-round win in Ashford this weekend to preserve the Sportingbet Channel Islands AC’s British League Division III status.

We’ve got to win the match basically before anything else happens,’ said the team manager. ‘We need eight points [for the win] and then rely on a couple of other teams coming bottom.’

The two bottom teams are relegated. ‘I think Edinburgh have resigned themselves to finishing bottom, so I don’t expect they will send a big team. ‘Leeds, the top team, are not expected to send a big team either. They can’t be caught.’ Winnie’s relative confidence going into the fourth and final match of the summer lies in the positive news that he has been able to choose his strongest squad, by far, of the season.

Captained by Jersey’s Peter Irving it is Guernsey athletes who dominate the team with Lee Merrien who became a father for the first time at the weekend, making his season’s bow in the competition. The same goes for steeplechasers Steve Dawes (pictured in a cross-country race in Jersey) and Lee Garland, the latter having struggled with injury all summer after having run the London Marathon in April.