NEXT Tuesday the first of what I hope will be many successful Big Breakfasts takes place at the Pomme d’Or Hotel when guest speaker Tommy Horton launches the 2009 appeal for funds for the Island Games.

Although £12 a head might seem expensive, £6 of this goes towards the costs of sending our squad to Aland and from past experience I do know that the Pomme breakfasts are extremely tasty. But are the Island Games, which are expected to cost everyone who travels there at least £1,000 per person, worth it?

In my view – yes – because it is an honour to represent your Island, although I can sympathise with those islanders who won’t be going because, as football team manager Dave Kennedy says: ‘When you look at the economic downturn the reality really hits home and I fully understand why some players have been unable to commit.’

For ‘players’ you can substitute competitors in all of the Island Games’ sports although the difference in football is that if you are selected and refuse to go, you aren’t perceived to be letting just yourself down, you’re seen to be letting the team down as well.

Kennedy understands that and he’s a realist when he says: ‘Our expectations will not be as high as they would have been travelling with an experienced senior squad but we will look to enjoy the games and do as well as we can.’ Money – or rather the lack of it – will be a determining factor not so much for these Games, I suspect, but will be in the next Games and the Games after that and it will be many years before we see 3,211 competitors compete, as they will do in Aland.

Meanwhile I have nothing but praise for the JFA, the manager and the players in both the men’s and women’s football teams who will pay, between them, over £40,000 for a week’s football on a group of islands somewhere in the cold waters of the Baltic Sea. Hopefully, the experience will be one they will cherish for the rest of their lives and I would expect the players to be tremendous ambassadors for Jersey who are bidding to host the 2015 Games.

If they succeed in the bid, the boost to Island tourisim would be considerable, which is another reason why we should all support this year’s squad – and go to as many Pomme d’Or breakfasts as we can.

Supporting the home town club
ON Saturday afternoon I spent an enjoyable two or three hours at the Wanderers’ football ground, reminiscing at times with a few of the spectators about games past while also watching a match which Jersey Scottish won 2-1 against the home side in the Le Riche Cup.

Take away the occasional swear words and it was richly entertaining while the sideline chat was good enough to fill two or three other columns in the JEP. David Eves, for example, put his afternoons into perspective when he said that football on a Saturday was ‘traditional’ and that the alternative, to go shopping at the Co-op, had no appeal at all.

Frank Lucas, who will be 82 in March, talked about his long love-affair with the Wanderers dating back to the 1940s and that he was, and is, a ‘one club man’ before both men compared today’s footballers with those of the past. The skill levels might be higher today, they argued, but too many modern footballers fall over at the hint of contact – a trend introduced by foreign players, perhaps? – adding that a generation ago after a particularly fierce tackle you simply got up and got on with the game.

Their comments about playing to the whistle while trying to influence the referee in any decision he made took me back to the summer, when I enjoyed a similar afternoon, this time on a Wednesday, in bright sunlight, at the FB Fields. The competition was for kids under 11, and the reason why I mention it is that afterwards the adults in charge made mention of the influence of ‘adult’ football on their junior school prodigies.

Because they’d seen it on telly, some kids as young as eight or nine would fall over, demanding a foul as soon as an opposition player robbed them of the ball. By now they’d already learnt to abuse the referee (although, presumably, the swear words would come later). And, in senior football, there is a fine line between good-natured banter with the referee and his linesmen and genuine abuse. On Saturday at the Hockey Club that line wasn’t crossed although I would have appreciated more subtle humour from the sidelines, while I also respected Frank’s notion that, if you support one football team when you’re a kid, you support that football team for life.

Because I happened to be born in Derbyshire and my uncles (but not my father) supported their local team, I feel I have no option but to support it, too. But as my wife pointed out recently, I have lived in Jersey longer than I have lived anywhere else in the world.

So who should I support? – St Peter, because when I taught at Les Quennevais their team was made up mainly of friends I knew at the time? Trinity, because I spent some of my happiest days in the parish when we lived there and our children went to Trinity School? Or Wanderers, because I taught at least two of their managers, several of their past players and now watch their children kicking a football around as their fathers did from 1975 onwards.

For anyone, even a reporter from the JEP, it is difficult not to go to a football match without wanting one of the teams you’re watching to win. But while I wasn’t born here, Frank Lucas was. His roots must lie very deep in the Wanderers’ soil and I envy his loyalty.

Perhaps, when I’m in my 80s and have lived here for over 60 years I, too, can give 100 per cent support to a parish side. But I wonder . . . is it in your genes that where you’re born determines the football team you’ll support for the rest of your life? Or can you swap allegiances, from one team to another, although I’d question how many ‘true’ Man United supporters (330 million, according to Wikepedia) there are, just as I would question their ability to name the team which won the European Cup 4-1 against Benfica in 1968. By comparison Frank Lucas can name the Wanderers’ side which won the Willis Cup (4-1 v JMT at Springfield) and then the Upton (5-2 v North), both in the 1947/1948 season!

Murray’s minted …
ANDREW Murray might be out of the Australian Open, having lost to Fernando Verdasco in the quarter-finals 2-6, 6-1, 1-6, 6-3, 6-4 but he needn’t worry. Estimates as to how much he has already earned in 2009, as January becomes February, ranges from $1.5 to $2.5 million dollars, all for the sake of hitting a tennis ball.

So am I jealous? – you bet I am! – But then what do you do with so much loot? Well, you employ another 25 people including coaches, a physio, a ‘media consultant’, a psychologist, dieticians and ‘hitting partners’ to look after you. (Having earned that sort of money, you could probably hire a ready-made best friend as well).

All of this for a man who’s only recently entered his 20s and whose mum, Judy, has been, and continues to be, the driving force in his career. Murray isn’t alone in leading such a pampered life. Footballers, too, no longer have to suffer the ignominy of cleaning boots and laying the kit out.

If, for example, you play for Manchester United, a flat screen TV in the dressing room tells you what time you’re due for training; massage times; pedicure times; hair-care times; who to instruct to run a bath for you; yoga times; lunch selection (and at what temperature it will be served) plus what times you need to go to the toilet, to ‘keep yourself regular’.

And you thought tennis and football were just ‘a game’? So, for information, the last Englishman to win at Wimbledon, Fred Perry, had only one ‘minder’, chain-smoking AR ‘Pops’ Summers, who was all of the above, plus, according to Perry’s biography, a ‘master of psychology’.

So if you are in the top ten, in any sport, how many advisors/trainers/psychologists/media men do you really need? I would suggest, even in this day and age, you could get rid of them all and just settle for one. Your mum.

A deserved recipient
Finally, congratulations to Guernsey’s Alison Merrien for being crowned the 2008 Sportingbet CI Sports Personality last night at Beau Sejour. All of the five nominated deserved to be there and what pleased me most, and one of the reasons I voted, was that if you had won or been short-listed before, there was no reason why you couldn’t be short-listed again.

This isn’t always true of other awards ceremonies, when the feeling is that if so-and-so won a trophy one year, next year it’s someone else’s turn – even if, by comparison, last year’s winner deserves the award and may continue to deserve it for years to come.

Postscript …
To vote by phone for any of the nominees cost 10p, which I reckon was pretty good value for money, particularly as Sportingbet matched each payment on behalf of disabled sport in both Jersey and Guernsey.