Two weeks ago I wrote about my admiration for Ian Black who, I explained, was ploughing a lonely furrow as he trains hard for Commonwealth Games selection in individual medley at the Perth swimming pool complex in Australia.

Well, as was pointed out to me afterwards, he deserves all the praise he gets but he is not the first or only swimmer to pack his bags, having saved up his money to take the plunge in waters new.Simon Le Couilliard, for one, was there before him.

The following is part of an e-mail I recently received from his parents, Liz and Dennis Le Couilliard, about a 2009 the Jersey swimmer would probably wish to forget:

‘Simon is also currently in Perth and has been there since January 2008. While the primary reason to go to Perth was to swim – after all the conditions are significantly better than in Jersey – it is very much like Ian has said, in that we pay for everything as we go (30 per cent more now than when Simon first went over due to the exchange rate). Simon is also undertaking a university degree as he really felt that he needed to get on with his life as well as continue to train.

‘Unfortunately he has had a really bad year, a stress fracture in his back at the start of the year and, just as he was back in the water training, some fool drove into him (Simon said that Aussies are dreadful drivers) and he sustained broken ribs and whiplash injuries. This took some time to recover and he is still has problems if he undertakes high impact sports.

‘He wanted to swim for Jersey at the Island Games but he was not fit enough and he had to drop out of the team. This was very disappointing for him as he has competed in every Island Games team since Isle of Man, where he won his first medal.

Island Games has always been important to him; competing at this level is as important as competing at the Commonwealth Games. Then to end the year he had to have his appendix out. He has finally got back into training and just before Christmas managed to get very close to the qualifying time he needs for Commonwealth Games.

Simon is still very focused on getting to Commonwealths but has kept a very low profile due to his bad year in 2009.

‘Like Ian, Simon is making his own way. As well as attending university and training he also works when he can to help financially. Prior to 2009, Simon was the only swimmer who was within the accepted time to gain some support from the Commonwealth Games committee to help him in his training. Because he could not make this time in 2009, he has lost out on any grants.

‘Meanwhile our other two children, both swimmers, Grace and Michael competed in Aland for Jersey. Simon has only been home once since he went to Australia in January 2008; he knew that financially we could not afford for him to return for holidays when he opted to go.

‘Australian universities do not offer grants/scholarships to non-residents and while swimming is a major event in Australia, it is not a major part of the university life; he was the only swimmer from his university to compete at the University Games in 2008.

‘Simon may have gained better financial support if he had opted to go to either a UK or American university. In going to Australia , he had to make choices. He knew that he would have to work as well as train and that he could not pop home for the occasional week-end and even if he does not qualify for Commonwealth Games, we, as parents, still feel that he will have gained from this once-in a-lifetime unique experience.’

On Tuesday I keyed in 74 names and times including Florence Gothard (4.47); Betsan Williams (9.46); Catherine Billington (9.09); Charlotte Turner (10.48); Thomas Boulton (10.05); Samuel Maher (8.34); Tom Ward (8.37) and Daniel Robinson (7.56).

On that same day, in the sports pages, I read that 27 primary schools had entered the Ron Lobb charity indoor five-aside tournament next Saturday at Fort Regent.

Finally, late last week I read that Janvrin Primary School had beaten Victoria College Prep 2-1 in the Channel Islands Primary Schools Seven-aside football tournament held in Guernsey.

To begin at the beginning. What event on a cold winter’s day could possibly attract 74 people to turn out? Even protests in the Royal Square rarely command such a number.

Well, it was the fifth Advisa cross-country series of races for children aged between 9 and 13 held at Beauport and the names at the start of this article were the winners. Seventy-four participants! And fully 27 primary schools entering a seven-a-side football contest!

I was then, just as I am now, astounded and delighted that so many youngsters are currently taking part in sport. As I have written before, I cannot imagine so much commitment, so many participants, from areas twice the size as Jersey in the UK – which in turn reminds me that Jersey is unique, not least for its spirit of community.

As for the underdogs – Janvrin – becoming CI champions, well, it just goes to show that you don’t have to be a giant to slay Goliath. I was delighted for them. And what do all three accounts have in common? – Simply this.

That there are hundreds of adults in the Island who give their time freely to ensure that our youngsters get the most out of life, not just in sport but in all kinds of activities. On behalf of those youngsters, to Paul Raimbault et al, ‘thank you’.

On Saturday afternoon, as most every other Saturday afternoon, I was at St Peter, watching the JRFC 1st XV playing mainland opposition, in this case second-placed Old Albanians. It was not a free-flowing, 15-man open rugby kind of a game, but for its intensity and for the sheer drama of the game it was second to none.

As former 1st team player Mick Curzons made a point of telling me afterwards: ‘now that’s what I call a game of rugby.’

Ultimately Jersey won, 19-12, but not before they were reduced to 12 men with one player injured and two in the sin-bin. It goes without saying which team I supported although I had – have – mixed feelings when full-time professional Donovan Sanders, knowing he would be penalised when he deliberately strayed offside in the dying moments, prevented, by his actions, a near certain try for the visitors. But I’ll come to that later.

On Sunday night I then watched a fair part of the Masters snooker on BBC, only to turn off and go to bed when Ronnie O’Sullivan was leading 9-6 against Mark Selby. He only needed one more frame to retain the title and, as the commentators said, there was little chance of him losing that.
However, the next morning I read the following:

‘Last night Mark Selby completed an epic recovery from three frames down with four to play to beat Ronnie O’Sullivan 10-9 and win the Masters at Wembley for the second time in three years. Selby, who was beaten 10-8 by O’Sullivan in last year’s final, pocketed the £150,000 first prize and denied his opponent a fifth Masters title to add to three world and four UK titles. He led only twice, after the first frame and the last.

‘I thought I was dead and buried at 9-6,’ Selby said. ‘To play Ronnie anywhere it’s a great atmosphere but this was special. I just took it a frame at a time.’

Finally, on Tuesday night I watched a fair proportion, including all of the second half, of the Manchester Derby. It was tremendous drama and, not being a Manchester United fan (unless they are playing in Europe) I enjoyed it immensely. So why am I lumping all three games together?

It is all to do with the way I watch my sport. Let me explain. As a sports reporter who has to write about and watch all kinds of sport, unless that sport is of the same intensity as was the rugby at St Peter on Saturday, my mind needs to kept in focus, otherwise I’d be thinking about my tea; my shopping list; home and the othe necessities of life.

But a game like Jersey v Old Albanians engages my mind to such an extent that nothing is required to stay focussed, the intensity of the battle is rattling around in the Lake head for a full 80 minutes, which seem to positively scurry on by.

Shopping, home, tea . . . all have no chance of intruding on the matter at hand. Complete and utter absorption, which might have been the case had I stayed up to watch the Masters snooker and which was also there for the last half an hour as Man City clung on to their 2-1 win over the Reds.

Snooker, as a sport, can be deadly dull – two men hitting a series of snooker balls over a bit of green baize. However, a final like this one . . . I’m sorry I missed it.

As for Sanders’ deliberately straying offside? Well, as I’ve said before, I abhor cheating. And, to an impartial observer, they might condemn Donovan’s action, after all, he knew exactly what he was doing and it wasn’t a very gentlemanly thing to do. But when I spoke to the opposition coach, he admitted that in similar circumstances he would expect one of his players to do exactly the same. I was glad of that, because afterwards I wondered, if to win, I might have done exactly the same.

Thankfully, I will never know, and afterwards, after Sanders had been yellow-carded, the same visitors’ coach made the comment that Jersey weren’t to blame – that it was the referee, who had seen the incident, who was at fault ‘because, in my book, he should have given us a penalty try. But he didn’t,’ – a decision which pleased not only me, but most of the rest of the 700-plus crowd.

Australian bowls coach Lachlan Tighe is being put forward to manage and coach Jersey’s men’s bowlers for their 2010 Commonwealth Games competition in Delhi nine months from now.

Well, I don’t know how good a coach he is, but I am heading towards liking him already from the comments attributed to him for, like many good sporting Aussies, he calls a spade a spade and, presumably ‘Down Under’, an Englishman a ‘pommie xxxxxxxxx.’

As well as telling the Jersey bowlers that he will play devil’s advocate and pass on any tips from his observation of his native Australian team, he says: ‘Jersey’s isolation puts them at a disadvantage, but if they train effectively, enthusiastically, and collectively, that could well offset any perceived disadvantage.’

Then (and I loved this!): ‘Good players can bowl on any surface, and Jersey’s bowlers must show the necessary mental toughness – which is an emphasis of mine.’

Forthright, plain speaking and, come to that, 100 per cent right. Good on you, sport.

Finally, I was much saddened during the week to hear that one of my favourite commentators, Bill McLaren, had died in Hawick at the age of 86.
He was, to a large extent, a commentator of the old school; no bias or malice, happy with long pauses on air so that the viewer could simply enjoy watching the spectacle and seemingly always unruffled, no matter what was happening on and off the rugby field.

Like other commentators who viewers or listeners learnt to trust, he also occasionally came up with phrases which will long live on after the people who say them have retired or, as in Bill’s case, have sadly died.

McLaren is not alone in having created a few choice phrases. The late Kenneth Wolstenholme’s ‘they think it’s all over . . . it is now’ after the 1966 World Cup spawned a TV show and David Coleman’s ‘ . . . And Juantorina opens his legs and shows his class’ during the 800 metres of the 1976 Olympic Games spawned a whole series of books and a regular column in Private Eye.

Bill McLaren rarely, if ever, made gaffes live on air. But the retired schoolmaster did have a way with words. So, to end this week’s comment piece, here are a few of his pithy, but not unkind comments during a lifetime of his talking about the game he loved.

On England centre David Duckham: ‘He could sidestep three of the opposition in a telephone box’; on Erika Rowe, the first streaker when she ran across at the England v Australia rugby match on 4 January 1982, waving her bra in the air: ‘Hmm . . . I wonder which side she’s on?’

And these: ‘Those props are as cunning as a bag o’ weasels’; ‘He’s like a demented ferret up a wee drainpipe,’ and my own favourite, when Jonah Lomu came down on England like a ton of bricks during the 1995 World Cup semi-final in Cape Town:

‘I’m no hod carrier,’ he said, surveying the wreckage at Newlands after the All Black had blown over Will Carling’s startled team for the first of his four tries, ‘but I’ll tell you this. I’d be laying bricks if I looked up and saw that fellow running at me. . .’