Towards the end of 2009 I had the pleasure to interview our first, and currently only Commonwealth Games-qualified swimmer, 20-year-old Ian Black, who could represent Jersey in the 400m IM and conceivably the 200m IM as well if he swims as quickly as he believes he can in Sydney in March.

‘Yes, I believe I can go faster,’ he told me, explaining that his current career is swimming, full-time, in Perth, Australia, under the guidance of former AIB Tigers coach Matt Magee.
‘Ian’s done it all on his own,’ his mum, Sally added. ‘He’s saved money by working in Jersey and lives, cooks, washes, irons and trains in Perth unaided; he even cycles to “work” every day.’

It takes a huge amount of dedication and to turn your hobby into a career like that.
Of course, as all three of us agreed, if he had gone to a UK university as other young Islanders have done, perhaps he would have been coached and nurtured there. But by his own admission, Ian isn’t an academic.

So the college option was never there for him, unlike other Islanders who have taken, or are taking degrees allied to some of the best facilities and UK coaches you can find.
This is not to take anything away from them. Why, I would have loved to have been able to study for four or five hours a day while spending most of the rest of the time in training, with a top coach on the rugby pitch, swimming pool or in the gym if, in my days at university, that option had been open to me.

Certainly in America, even when I was in my teens, you could gain a sports scholarship even if your academic ability was – how shall I describe it? – of ‘secondary importance’.
For the Americans then, as now, appreciate that sporting prowess is worth cultivating and that just as Jesse Owens was never going to be an Einstein, so Albert Einstein was never going to be a Jesse Owens.

So I applaud Ian Black and his family for the courage they’ve shown in promoting not only what Ian enjoys, but something he’s good at. And if he hadn’t gone to Perth? Well, I doubt if the Jersey Amateur Swimming Association would have stepped in, as they did recently (and full credit for them for doing so), to help him pay his way.

Meanwhile I doubt if many other Island swimmers will follow him to Perth where he has the choice of two outdoor 50m pools, one 50m indoor pool, a gym, a conditioning room and a recovery room.

So why won’t many other Jersey swimmers follow in his footsteps? Paul du Feu answered that question in our recent Sports Review of the Decade. To Paul, the biggest setback to swimming in the Island was the closure of the Fort Regent pool in 2002, ‘a single act that changed everything and left the (swimming) clubs having to reinvent themselves.’
In exasperation he added: ‘The actual impact will not be seen for at least another five years when the six-year-olds at the time of the closure will be 15; all of those following them will not have swum at the Fort.

‘My feeling is we will never do as well again and the past decade will go down as “the golden age” as we now have 150 swimmers instead of 550.’

Before the Fort Regent pool finally emptied I was told that it would close down and why – reasons which, allegedly, had nothing to do with the filtration system or the state of the pool itself.

And a far-sighted Island at the time would have thought bigger, rather than smaller, and turned it into a proper 50m indoor pool instead of closing it.

Just for information I phoned Fort Regent less than a week ago to ask what the pool was being used for these days. ‘Nothing,’ I was told. ‘Hasn’t been used (in any meaningful way) since 2002.’

So a generation of youngsters are missing out and although I go swimming myself at the Waterfront pool, where they kindly provided Ian with a free pass while he spent his Christmas over here, a 25m pool in this day and age is like going back to the days of running on grass or playing football on the local Rec.

‘At least Ian is getting a lot of practice doing tumble turns,’ his mum added, kindly.
But no 50m pool; no pool at Fort Regent; no decent diving board facilities – the Island authorities ought to be ashamed of themselves for sending the sport back to the dark ages.

Meanwhile – 550 swimmers reduced to 150? That is a terrible indictment of one of the healthiest sports you can ever aspire to and one that, as Sally Black pointed out, is a necessary sport.

‘We taught all of our children to swim as soon as they could,’ she said. ‘We thought it important, living as we do on an island.’

Looking back over the year just gone, I wondered who your sporting heroes might be?
Personally (and possibly because he’s slightly older than me) in second place would be Tom Watson who, at 58, came so close to winning the Open Championship at Royal Birkdale before, on the final hole, he took three putts and then lost the four-hole play-off by six strokes to American Steward Cink.

In years to come I wonder how many people will remember Cink’s name in comparison to that of the impeccably behaved Watson who, after losing, congratulated Cink with warmth and generosity.

Afterwards he ambled into the Press room to talk to the sports journalists who, virtually to a man, all wanted him to win. ‘Come on fellows,’ he said. ‘This ain’t a funeral’. If that had been me I think I would have been in the dressing rooms breaking my clubs one by one, cursing, and generally feeling immeasurably sorry for myself.

Then he was asked if he still harboured any other sporting ambitions. He thought about it for a while. ‘For my peers to say: “that Tom Watson, he was a hell of a golfer”,’ is what he came up with.

A good loser can be even more praiseworthy than a good winner. And I applaud Watson for his dignity, and generosity of spirit.

So who would be my No 1 sporting hero? Rooney? Drogba? Ronaldo, Giggs? Notice that all of these are football related, because my sporting hero of 2010 was once a footballer; a northerner; and one of the best managers that England has seen.

Self-effacing, at times a little forgetful, but as warm as toast, Bobby Robson was my 2009 sporting hero. Successful at Ipswich; an England manager who took England to the brink of a World Cup final in 1990 and a hero at Newcastle United when he was sacked – despite taking the club from bottom to fifth place in just a few short months – he was a rarity in football; a gentleman, in the true sense of the word.

He was so passionate about the sport that when he returned to St James’ Park at the age of 66 and was asked about retirement he said: ‘I cannot imagine life without being involved in football. You cannot go through life putting everything into it and reach a line someone else has drawn and say “That’s it, I’m finished”. I can’t put football away. Sooner or later it will probably put me away, but until it does . . . I’m going to still be around.’

Well, it wasn’t football which finished Robson. It was the fifth bout of cancer he had endured but not until he had raised over one and a half million pounds for a cancer centre in Newcastle, the last event being a charity match at St James’ Park in July when 33,000 people turned up to pay tribute. Five days later Sir Bobby was dead.

Four times Bobby Robson fought, and beat cancer. Robson 4; Cancer 1. Not a bad score for a working class lad from the North-East.

As for 2010? Well, included in my dreams would be at least one Commonwealth Games medal for Jersey in Delhi; an indoor netball stadium for the Island plus a purpose-built gymnastics hall; a replacement horse and funding for Paralympic dressage rider Simon Laurens; to watch the JRFC 1st XV play rugby at Twickenham; to see just one Island football manager (and organisation) for all Combination and JFA Games; to watch a Jersey football team play in more than one meaningful competition; to see gymnastics included in Jersey’s bid for the 2015 Island Games.

The last-named wish for the New Year follows on from a piece of nonsense from a consultation review document initiated by the Executive Committee of the NatWest Island Games, currently doing the rounds, where, on page 2, you can read the following:
‘(Let us reduce) the number of sports per Games to 14 by removing Bowls, Gymnastics, Judo and Squash which (are) indicated to be the least popular sports for both Host Islands and competitors.’

Gymnastics ‘least popular’? To whom? For from my visits to three Island Games I can truthfully say that there are always more participants and spectators in the gymnastics hall than in many of the other sports including judo, basketball, archery and . . . shooting.

Finally, I was much taken by Rob Andrew’s comments at the end of 2009 that ‘In the amateur game there was only one motivation and that was because you loved it. I often look at somebody and think: “I wonder if he would have made a good amateur?” It’s a defining question. Jonny Wilkinson would have made a great amateur.’
So in this day and age . . . how many any sportsmen or women would make ‘great amateurs’?