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Comment from the
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 The loneliness of the long distance pro sportsman
WOMEN playing previously traditionally male sports have been in the news recently, and I was also delighted that the second of six girls’ football festivals at Les Quennevais last Saturday attracted over 100 players, all under the age of 16.
Meanwhile in Tuesday’s JEP, there was a quarter-page picture of Grouville’s Jess Lima controlling the ball in a game against St Paul’s.
St Paul’s went on to win the game 4-1; but the picture underlined that that the sports pages are no longer the prerogative solely of us men.
Long may that continue and, on the subject of women playing men’s sports, I wonder how many Islanders can answer this question.
‘Which women’s team have won every game they’ve played, although they don’t compete in a local league, play mainland sides only and have a Scottish international propping for them.’ The clue must be in the word ‘propping’, which gives the game away as rugby.
For Jersey United Banks Ladies’ rugby team, a week ago, travelled to Tottonians (Southampton) where they beat the home side 7-0 in what were described as ‘appalling conditions’.
Whenever the Banks’ women’s team plays I look forward keenly to their results and hope, sooner rather than later, to watch them win a game or two.
And it can’t be easy, to keep the momentum going for the only women’s rugby XV side on the Island although I know how fanatical captain Amanda Corbett is about her sport and was delighted to see that Ali Christie (seasoned Scottish international) has also come on board in the front row. Long may it continue, and long may Amanda keep leading a winning team, who were described by Tottonians as ‘the best opposition we have faced all season’.
Meanwhile, if any other women want to take up rugby, Amanda’s number is 07797845295.
Matt Banahan has been making big headlines in the national press in recent weeks and he deserves his call-up for England in this weekend’s Dubai Sevens.
I hope he does well; but I was reminded, earlier this week, that despite being 6 ft 7 in tall and a colossus, he’ll not be 21 until next month.
Twenty. At that age I was still in my late adolescent phase, unsure who I was, or what I was doing at a Teachers’ Training College which I’d drifted into, because my parents thought it would be a good idea for me to be the first member of the Lake family to gain a degree.
Looking back on my life, I was 22 before I actually began to work hard for my exams after failing a history exam; having to take a year out of college and then returning, a year later, to take a re-sit which, if I had failed, could have seen me working not as a teacher or journalist but – my career teacher’s advice – ‘working down t’pit’.
‘T’pit’ failed me (for information there is only one working coal pit making a profit in Derbyshire) while there are currently three young Lakes at university in the UK, ranging in age from 25, to 22, to 19. I mention this only because while two of them have fixed views about the lives they want to lead, the youngest hasn’t much of an idea where his degree will take him, and all three of them, at times, display the same kind of gaucheness that most Island kids display, when they leave Jersey to live on the mainland.
It’s a big world out there; made harder for Jersey youngsters because our Island society is so much smaller, so much more intimate, than the world of the London Underground, which includes train journeys that seem to go on forever and when you don’t know anyone when you climb on a bus or move more than 100 yards away from the house you’re living in.
Graeme Le Saux wrote about this in his recent autobiography. He felt, at times, an outsider, and he wasn’t helped when one of his coaches ‘laughingly’ joked about the number of kids born during the Occupation whose fathers were German.
Graeme was, and is, intelligent, articulate, and bright enough to devise his own strategies to live for long periods away from his Island home without it hurting too much.
I believe the same is true of sporting superstars like Serena Guthrie, Mariana Agathangelou, Beckie Herbert and young Matt who might be built the size of a small mountain – but who won’t be 21 until just before the New Year.
For no matter how good you might be in your sport, you can’t play it 24 hours a day – and for Islanders, especially young Islanders, the filling-in between bits must, at times, be very hard to endure indeed.
Meanwhile, to continue on the theme of youth, can I just say that I hope someone comes forward to offer a bit of money towards the Jersey Secondary Schools’ Football Association Star Trophy squad, who are paying – literally – for their success. Having beaten Poole East Dorset 3-1 at Springfield, they’re running out of money if they want to progress further in The Inter-Association Cup.
Their next game is away against Bridgewater and the irony is that the more games they win, the less chance there is of them continuing in the competition because of the cost.
They need funding . . . potential sponsors can get in contact with manager Russell Le Feuvre on
Finally, the JEP has been filled with stories recently headed ‘The Island of the Old’ (or other headlines with a similar theme).
With more retired elderly and fewer babies, we are being told, the Island economy could face a downward spiral because we’re all living too long and there aren’t enough young people earning enough money to help pay our pensions.
Well, that probably is the case (and it has echoes of what’s happening in the UK).
However, there is hope for us oldies (or, in my case, a middle-aged oldie) as was reported recently in the Daily Mail.
When he first pulled on his boots in 1947, shorts were long, footballs were brown and Brylcream was the grooming product of choice.
‘Sixty years on, soccer fashions have changed, but Dickie ‘Dixie’ Borthwick is still going strong,’ I read.
The ‘sprightly’ 72-year old still plays football, as he has done ever year since the 1940s, these days for Wyke Rangers. His sons play in the same team. During that time he has never been booked or sent off and ‘I’m still capable of putting in a few good runs followed by a decent cross,’ he is quoted as saying.
He reckons that giving up smoking 37 years ago helped his fitness; that and porridge before every game ‘to give me energy’.
Brilliant. And even with my dodgy right knee, if and when I turn 72, I will make a conscious effort to emulate ‘Dixie Borthwick’ although I will also insist that my shorts are well down to my ankles and that if anyone attempts to tackle me, they must immediately be given a red card for assaulting an old age pensioner.
You know, if you really want to, you can play sport well into your second childhood . . .
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