On Saturday I had the half-pleasure of watching Jersey RFC beat Canterbury 31-15 at St Peter.

I say ‘half-pleasure’ because while 40 minutes of the game were enjoyable, the other 40 were not.

Anyway, two incidents stayed with me after the game, neither of them to do with the players except in a general kind of way.

First, was the impeccable minute’s silence before the game for former Canterbury player, Joe Vatabua, who died so tragically on service in Afghanistan on New Year’s Day. He was 24 years old . . . younger than both of my daughters and two years older than my son.

An impeccable silence, yes, although one person was very active during the silence . . . not talking, mind, but active, for JEP photographer Rob Currie was noticeably moving quite a bit as he photographed the two rival teams as they stood together, contemplating, I would assume, the idea that in times of war Joe’s fate could be that of any one of us.

At first I was annoyed. ‘Why don’t you stand still, Rob?’ I thought, tetchily, before I realised that without photographs of scenes such as these the memory of people like Vatabua will quickly fade.

Rob wasn’t being disrespectful. And he’s a damn good photographer, too. So I’m glad he was there to capture on film a moment of time in appreciation of a man I never knew but a man, nevertheless, who gave his life fighting for something I’d like to think he believed in.

On a lighter note. I was sitting next to one of my oldest friends, Roger Trower, reminding him of the game we played when the opposition hooker insisted on heeling the ball back with his head (I joke not; I was scrum half that day.)
Anyway, soon afterwards Roger, incensed at the apparent gamesmanship of the Canterbury front row, leaned forward to abuse the referee.

‘Do you know the rules ref? Don’t you know any of the rules about scrummaging?’ was the mildest things that he roared at a ref who, to my way of thinking, palpably didn’t.

But then, having roasted the official, he added a respectful ‘Sir’ . . . which made me laugh out loud.

But then rugby supporters do sarcasm and respect equally well. Almost immediately afterwards I enjoyed the dig at Roger when his son, Nick, playing at No 8, tried to run through one of the opposition without deviating to either left or right. He nearly succeeded as well, for the Canterbury player fell to the ground, clutching at Nick ‘Barrel’ Trower’s ankles.

‘Learnt his sidestep from you, did he Rodge?’ I asked. And Roger, to his credit and without saying a word, smiled back at me.

Meanwhile, what about the cricket? Five Tests, one defeat, one draw and three wins and, dear reader, for every one of those matches I went to bed with my headphones on to listen to virtually every ball, be it bowled, batted or caught.

Because of poor reception where I live and because I love Geoffrey Boycott’s rasping analysis of the game of cricket, I listened to Radio 4 during the current Ashes series.

So, as the game headed towards its climax and as the last wicket was about to fall, what did I hear?

‘And now over to the Shipping Forecast . . .’ which in its way was a defining moment, like finding that the last page of War and Peace has been torn out, or like stopping half a yard short at the bottom of Oblivion at Alton Towers, or like falling asleep ten minutes before the end of Gone With the Wind. (Well, yes, I admit it was half an hour before the end but then you get my drift.)

So I never did hear Jonathan Agnew describe Beer playing on, bowled by Tremlett, but then I did watch the highlights of the game later that day and, for a second time, saw among the crowd the same sight that Mr Grumpy (sorry, Helier Clement) has also written about – a Jersey flag unfurled somewhere in the 20,000-plus in the Barmy Army.

I loved it* – just as I loved some of the jokes we can now tell after winning the Ashes for the first time in 24 years on Aussie soil.

Jokes like: ‘What do you call an Aussie cricketer with 100 runs next to his name?’ (a bowler); ‘How should the Australian coach reshuffle the Australian batting order?’ (Move ‘Extras’ up to No 3); ‘What do you call a world class Australian cricketer?’ (Retired); What do you call an Australian who can hold a catch?’ (A fisherman.)

Still on the subject of cricket – and this, apparently, is true, taken from You Cannot Be Serious! by Matthew Norman, published by Fourth Estate Books.
Adolph Hitler was watching some English expats playing cricket in 1923 and was intrigued enough to ask to have the rules explained to him. Once the game was explained to him, he said it would never be played by the Nazis because . . . ‘the game is insufficiently violent for German fascists.’

Again, on a more serious note . . . Chez Lake currently has a French lodger, Gilbert Beraud, a language student in his early 50s and a keen swimmer. Well, he is keen enough but, sadly, no longer in Jersey. He’s only here for two weeks so went to the pool to ask for a week or fortnight’s pass. ‘We don’t do them,’ he was told. ‘The usual daily rate, or a three-month contract . . .’

So he paid his £3.80, went for his swim – and won’t be going back.

‘In France you pay much, much less,’ he told me. ‘And usually you pay only for the time you want to swim in the water. Half an hour, or an hour perhaps, and a different price for either one. You can also pay for several hours and when you have finished your swim, they deduct the time you were in the pool until you have no more credit of time left to your name.

‘As for having no short-term pass. I just can’t see the sense in it.’
There weren’t many people in the pool. But then if there is no incentive for tourists or short-stay visitors to repeat their going there Gilbert has, to my way of thinking, a very valid point.

One of the Island’s favourite horsemen, Simon Laurens, is standing down from international para-equestrian dressage competition and is retiring from the World Class Programme Performance squad.

Winner of individual silver and team gold medals at the 2008 Beijing Paralympics, bronze and gold medals at the 2009 European Championships and two gold medals at the 2007 world championships, Simon is not just a national paralympic champion, he’s a world paralympic champion.

I mention this because over the past five years, since I’ve known Simon, I recognise that he really is a thoroughly decent fellow. Self-effacing, with a wicked sense of humour and a man who loves life, despite being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 2004, he has never sought the fame that goes with his achievements.

But surely, the Island ought to mark those achievements now, before they become a mere memory. Arguably, he has as much right as the other five to be a sixth candidate for this year’s Sportingbet Sports Personality of the Year Awards or to be added to the list of Island sports heroes on the wallboards at Fort Regent.
Jersey likes its sporting heroes but sometimes I feel we tend to forget those who do great things, but somehow don’t get the public acclamation they richly deserve.

* Does anyone know who held up that Jersey flag and how they became members of the Barmy Army?