LAST Wednesday I had the pleasure of watching Plat Douet beat St Clement 5-4 on penalties after both teams had tied 3-3 after extra time in the first leg of the English Primary Schools’ seven a-side competition at the FB Fields.

They, along with De La Salle, La Moye and St Michael, next compete against Guernsey opposition and, eventually, any one of those eight teams could play at Wembley.

However, from an outsider’s point of view, what interested me most were the opinions of Dan Doyle (referee) and Pat Cullinane (secretary of the primary schools’ football section) afterwards.

Pat has been involved with primary school football for the last 40 years, and while he loves his football he has also seen a change in how the game is played. So, too, has Dan, and both men agree that in recent years something has been lost at grass roots level in our national sport.

If anything, they both say, the junior players are much more skilled, now, than a decade ago. However, skill isn’t the only thing that has changed and Dan made the point that some players – not all of them, mind – look to copy the Premiership players by appealing too easily for a penalty or by thinking there’s nothing wrong in tugging a shirt.

‘The game’s so much faster now, that if they only just realised it, they wouldn’t need to ape Premiership players. The last thing you want to do is to slow the game down,’ explained Doyle. ‘From a referee’s point of view, if someone tugs another player’s shirt in the penalty area, it’s a penalty, as simple as that. The game is still the same as it has always been; but you do see some negativity, perhaps stemming from what the boys see on television. It can be frustrating at times, but then we have to teach them early enough, otherwise they’ll take their bad habits with them into senior school.’

Pat also made mention of some of the bad habits children as young as nine or ten are picking up, but then he also made the point that one or two of the parents can be equally as bad in their determination for their children to win.
As an example, he cited a parent rushing to collect the ball in a match his son’s side were losing with two minutes to go. ‘He wouldn’t have done that for the other side,’ he said.

However, just as I enjoyed the match, not least because both managers, Richard Heaven (St Clement) and Stuart Pallent (Plat Douet) encouraged each other’s teams as well as their own, I took heart that afterwards one player – only one, mind – Connor Campbell made a point of going up to Pat to thank him for organising the competition. He didn’t have to do so, but it was a thoughtful gesture from a young lad who has a great deal of talent and who, a decade from now, could easily be scoring goals (as he did for St Clement), for Jersey.

Give a little whistle
On Saturday I had the pleasure (no, that isn’t the right word!) to spend the afternoon at Twickenham, watching a poor England team lose to a not much better Australian side.

In total both teams could only score a try apiece – ten points – but the final score was England 14, Australia 28.
In other words, 32 points were scored by the boot.

In the past I’ve often spoken about referees, and how you should never criticise them because they’re simply doing the best they can. However, on Saturday I wasn’t the only spectator from 82,000-plus who ended up by not watching the players, but by watching the referee.

He dominated the game; not by showing bias, but by incessantly blowing his whistle and consequently not allowing the game to flow.

Eventually, with five minutes of the game remaining, I joined another largish part of the crowd and made my way back through the turnstiles, to Richmond and to home.

And I had had an excellent seat, too, low down and on the west side and, just as I thought I was too absorbed in my own thoughts – about a rugby game spoilt – the man sitting next to me said: ‘Do you realise I’ve wasted nigh on £70, just to watch a referee blowing his whistle.’

Politicians should be courting sportAS well as being tennis development officer for the Channel Islands, Hugh Raymond is an astute, level-headed businessman.

If that wasn’t the case, the LTA wouldn’t have flown out to see him earlier this week to ask if Jersey would host, for the next three years, similar events to the recent Caversham Men’s ATP 30,000 euros Challenger at Les Ormes, and the ladies’ ITF 10,000 dollar tournament. On more than one occasion this week I’ve spoken to Hugh, and about what this means not just for Island tennis, but also to Jersey.

Hugh has no doubts that the more we bring over some of the world’s best tennis players to Jersey, the more that our youngsters will see them play and, in turn, will be inspired to emulate them. However, he also made a telling point about what tennis – and ALL sport – does for this Island.

‘Bit by bit the LTA have come to appreciate what the Island can offer them,’ he said. ‘I cannot think of anywhere else in the world where we have such a terrific group of volunteers, who work on these occasions for such a very small return.

‘We’ll be hosting two events like this next year but the States ought to realise what big business sport is in this Island. And it isn’t just about bringing people over to Jersey, although for this week alone we’ve filled three Jersey hotels.

‘Through our association with the LTA we’ll be sending 500 Islanders to watch Wimbledon next year. That’s just on the tennis side. But when you look purely at this weekend, you’ve so many other sports coming to the Island, including the half-marathon, rugby and the annual JSAD Games.

At times I just wish that some of our politicians would wake up to the fact that sport really is a very big business in this Island. The other point I’d make is how the Island needs our sports people. July and August look after themselves but without sportsmen and women visiting here in the lean months, like November and January, who else would occupy the hotels?’

Awards with real value
Finally, on the subject of the Jersey Sports Association for the Disabled, who hosted their annual awards ceremony at the Merton Hotel on Saturday, I was really pleased that the chairman, Paul Patterson, MBE, was awarded the JSAD coach of the year for his services to wheelchair basketball.

For not only did Paul begin the JSAD Investec wheelchair basketball series; he has also been instrumental in finding funds to pay for the wheelchairs; to find players to play the game; and to coach those players to such a degree that, on the three occasions I’ve played for the JEP against them, we’ve always lost and by ‘lost’ I mean heavily. Paul deserves his award; but then so, too, does Haydn Maguire, a 44year-old all-rounder who was this year’s JSAD sports personality of the year.

Well done, Haydn; not just for the many sports you play, but also for putting so much back into disabled sport through your coaching.

Loneliness of the Half Marathon winner
Postscript: I spoke to two very modest but very capable runners this last weekend. First was the winner of the Modern Hotels Jersey Half Marathon, Peter Norris, who told me afterwards that he wanted to talk to his fellow competitors as they ran the race, but that they seemed disinclined to do so and, as they weren’t running as fast as he was, he had to run the race on his own – which he did very comfortably, winning in a time of 1 hr 13 min 44 sec.

Peter will be back next year. As for the women’s race? – Sarah Davis said that if Jo Gorrod had been running, she would never have won. However, what made my day was when she said that she never runs to win. No; she runs for one reason only; because she likes to run. All of which seems, to me, a very good reason for picking up your trainers and getting out on to the track . . .