Did you cast your vote yet? You can you know, in advance, at St Paul’s Centre. I popped in today. A nice lady sits just inside the door and looks at you enquiringly. When she ascertains that you want to vote, and that you haven’t popped in for a pint of milk maybe, you are directed to one of four desks. Behind each a helper checks your ID, hands you your voting papers and points you to the voting booth. Job done you put your papers in an envelope and hand them to the nice lady on the way out. Tell you what, it beats running the gauntlet of candidates, their supporters and the staff at the regular polling stations.

So who’s going to get the four Senatorial seats up for grabs? There is one shoo-in (Sir Philip) but others you just ask yourself…why? I can’t find any betting on this (though maybe Honest Nev Ahier would give you a price) so I’ve made my own up. Remember it’s first past the post and the prices are for the candidate to get one of the four places.

Bailhache, Philip                                  1/100
Cohen, Freddie                                     1/2
Gorst, Ian                                                1/1
Le Gresley, Francis                             1/1
Colley, Rose                                           2/1
Farnham, Lyndon                                2/1
Pearce, Darius                                       40/1
Richardson, David                               50/1
Lagadu, Sylvia                                        75/1
Syvret, Stuart                                        100/1
Forskitt, Mark                                       100/1
Whitworth, Chris                                 1000/1
Corby, Linda                                          1000/1
 

It would be sad not to try to acknowledge the fairly extraordinary week we’ve had weather-wise. Today I believe sets the all-time record high for October temperature in Jersey, weighing in at around 26-27 degrees. We’ve a couple more days yet before it breaks and, if I were the race director of tomorrow’s Jersey Marathon, I’d be a worried man.

I’m fortunate to live in an apartment overlooking St Clement’s Bay. Tonight I’m able to sit on the balcony and type this wearing only my running shorts. There’s a sliver of old moon directly to the south, its reflection coming ashore across the calmest of half-tides. People and dogs are lazily walking along the shoreline; a family are enjoying a barbeque on the sands just below me. Across the bay the lights of a boat out of St Malo as she cuts her engines on the approach to St Helier Harbour, the red warning lights on the clusters of rocks that guard the approaches winking tirelessly.

On Thursday evening I took my beginner running group down into the Marina area. In the moonlight groups of people were sitting around chatting, quietly sharing cans of beer without the need to shout and bawl about it. Couples walking arm in arm, enjoying the unaccustomed warmth. A couple of lads were up on the sea wall entertaining passers by, and themselves, with a fire-eating trick. It was a reminder of how things are in warmer climes where people don’t dream of eating before 10 and then happily socialise, without creating trouble, into the early hours.

And unless it’s my imagination the many Jersey whingers and moaners have been less in evidence this last week. We must have the greatest proportion of malcontents of any place. These are divided into two groups; those that have all the answers but wouldn’t dream of actually trying to put them into practice, and those that are content to sit and generally complain about anything and in doing so make themselves and those around them eternally miserable. It seems to me that both lots have decided to give us a break these last few days.

So yes, we’ve been blessed. I’ve heard it said that we’re in for a harsh winter – well that’s fine by me – everything in its season. I wonder if I’ll ever again be sitting on a balcony in October in shorts only. At night the balcony doors are flung wide open and the mozzies have free entrance.

Meanwhile I fear for the marathoners tomorrow and the medics will be kept very busy. Those last 6-8 miles are hard enough under normal conditions.

Published at last! Visit http://athleticsinjerseyhistory.wordpress.com/

Incongruous sight at Dublin Airport on Saturday afternoon.

A slightly odd evening.  First of all there was John Hillier taking a break and letting Jersey’s Zane Duquemin coach the new British senior discus record holder Lawrence Okoye 🙂  Then, as I drove out by the cricket pavilion there were a bunch of lads with ‘Germany’ printed on the backs of their coloured jackets.  Crikey, I thought, they’re back.  The last time they arrived in the Island they stayed for five years!  Upon closer inspection they appeared to be the German national cricket team, over for a tournament.  Neither were they blond haired and slapping their thighs in time to oompah music – they were mostly rather dusky.  Similarly the French cricket team don’t wear berets and strings of onions.  The Israeli team don’t have curved noses and go round muttering ‘oy vay’.  Mostly all European cricketers outside of Britain, wherever they come from, are rather dusky.

The Irish national cricket team is, strangely, an all-white affair though their coach is the West Indian Phil Simmons.  There are presumably many players of sub-continent extraction in club cricket in Ireland but they haven’t yet made the national team.  I think there are a sprinkling of Aussies in there who presumably discourage the rest of the lads from smoking briar pipes and wearing big green hats.

But back to the Germans.  They were most unwelcome invaders between 1940 – 1945.  They deprived all Channel Islanders of their liberty and much hardship ensued towards the end, after the D-Day landings.  No tears were shed when they were turfed out.  But time is a great healer.  In the 1960s the Supreme Commander of the German forces in the CIs, Von Schmettow, returned to Jersey on some sort of pilgrimage.  Other old soldiers returned with their families.  St Helier is twinned with the German town of Bad Wurzach.  There is little remaining ill feeling towards the Germans in Jersey despite the atrocities visited on the wretched victims of the Nazi regime elsewhere.

Why is this?  Simply because the occupying German forces were, in the main, well behaved.  They were largely respectful to the residents, treated them with courtesy, and suffered the same deprivations in those last few awful months.  For all the deserved contempt that the Nazis in particular received after the War and up to the present day the conduct of the German forces in the Channel Islands can be held up as a small counterbalance.

But they still can’t beat us at cricket.

I am migrating any talk on the local athletics and running scene to a separate blog – www.athleticsjersey.wordpress.com  See you there.

Blimey, 14 years ago.  And the odd thing is I have no recollection whatsoever of any Island Games pre-1997.  My game was firmly cricket at the time.  (I had only recently dipped my toes into athletics via my daughter Emma who was only seven then.  Little did I realise what a big part of my life the sport would become in the future.)   

I got involved in the 1997 Games as a volunteer; I put my name down for attaché to a visiting team and I was intrigued to be allocated Iceland.  I eagerly looked forward to maybe escorting a blonde female javelin thrower or similar.  My hopes were dashed when the team arrived at the airport – a party of four shooters, a team manager and a wife.  However they proved to be pleasant enough company that week. 

But before this I decided to invest in a new-fangled mobile phone, the better to perform my duties with.  Mobiles had moved on from the Mark Ones where you had to heave them and their batteries around on your shoulder, but not by much.  I bought a red leather cover and hitched the whole ensemble ostentatiously to my belt. 

My first big duty was to lead the team into a recently renovated and packed Springfield Stadium, behind the girl carrying the team name, at the opening ceremony, and this was a surreal experience.  There was a worry though.  The weather was wet and cold, as it would be all week.  There was to be a dance display by Island schoolchildren dressed in the flimsiest summer costumes and it promised to be a miserable experience for them.  Then a quite amazing thing happened – ask anyone who was there.  The thick, dark clouds which covered the evening sky magically parted – right over the stadium, nowhere else – and the setting sun bathed the dancers in its rays.  The rain stopped, to start again later on.  Sadie Rennard gave her first public rendition of Beautiful Jersey accompanied by a pee-ing Jersey cow which stole the limelight. 

So I spent the following week picking the Iceland team up from their town hotel, delivering them to Crabbé and picking them up again later in the day.  There are (or were) three separate clubhouses up there for the various disciplines.  Each tried to outdo the others in the hospitality stakes and I spent a lot of time up there cadging coffee and biscuits.  I had no interest in the shooting.  The only bit of it I watched was when one of the guys competed at the indoor pistol range at St John. 

Sometimes I got away to watch a bit of the other sports.  The final day of the badminton – documented elsewhere in this blog – was excellent.  The archery at Les Quennevais was dreary.  The bit of basketball I watched was OK, but not enough to tempt me back.  I think I ventured to the rainy track on one evening only to see the Greenland bloke do a solo run in the 10,000m.  (Jersey athletics was singularly weak around that time, one gold only by Barbara Parker that year.)  And I returned to Springfield to watch the football final – Jersey beat Inys Mon, I think. 

I was instructed to transfer allegiance to the Shetlands team on the last day and had the devil of a job persuading them to leave the Central Hotel to walk to Springfield for the closing ceremony.  I last saw the Icelanders at the Monterey on the Saturday morning.  Waiting for their airport taxi their one medallist mournfully sipped at a bottle of beer muttering ‘get me off this accursed island.’  I don’t believe Iceland have entered the Games since. 

So onto 2015 and I wonder how it will compare.

Times past there weren’t too many Islanders that gave a flying fig about rugby.  The local team were OK, occasionally good.  They gave as good as they got on a mud heap opposite the airport.  Entry was free.  You could get a beer in the hut which then passed for the clubhouse before the match.  Then when you heard the tribal roars from within the changing rooms you’d file out into the rain and watch a rugged match of variable quality.  If you put a brolly up against the elements you were yelled at (quite rightly) by those whose view you blocked.  Afterwards the hospitality in the bar was legendary and the police weren’t much bothered about the bloothered state most of the clientele drove away in.

How things change.  Not being a rugby afficianado I’m not too sure exactly of the timelines and the processes. But yesterday JRFC found themselves promoted to the third tier of English rugby.  Next season they will host the likes of former giants Coventry and Rosslyn Park, and Birmingham/Solihull, just relegated from the second tier.  From a group of good old boys from the old amateur era the club is now highly professional, a necessity in today’s rugby world.  The ground is as good as any at this level.  The Academy is remarkable and hoovers up the majority of those young lads (and indeed lasses) with a sporting inclination.  The 4,000-ish crowd yesterday will have contained many who, until recently, would not have spared a glance over to the pitch when driving past.

What then of other sports?  Both colourful chairman Bill Dempsey and head coach Ben Harvey were both quick this weekend to express the hope that other Jersey sports would follow their lead.  Indeed soccer, mired in a mindset of latter days, has been left far behind.  Cricket has made great strides since I packed up playing (a coincidence) and now has an international profile one would never have dreamed of ten years ago.  Ultimately the size of the Island and the loss of its young stars to university will prove the limiting factor. Athletics likewise has raised its standards hugely in the last ten years but is faltering and will slide without renewed commitment.  Netball is punching beyond its weight at national level, all credit to those involved.  Swimming has probably been the most enduringly successful of all of our sports down the years but seems to have little further scope for expansion.  Those are the major sports; I hesitate to include bowls and shooting.  Consistently successful at international level they require little by way of physical preparation, just a great deal of practice.  A bit like darts or snooker.

But I echo local journalist and friend Chris Lake.  For an island of 90,000 people we show up remarkably well on the national, and even international, stages.  We stage great events here in Jersey and send our sports people all over the world flying the Jersey flag with great distinction.  For example, only this week young Stanley Livingston and Rosie Hill, Spartan Minis only a couple of years back, medalled in the Jeux des Iles in Palermo.

The danger is in taking the foot off the pedal thinking the job is done.  That is the road to rapid decline.

Jersey have produced the odd good middle-distance runner over the years.  Pre-eminent amongst them are Colin Campbell and Mike Guegan.  (The former still holds the Island record for every distance from 200m to the mile.)  There was a little cluster of good performers in the early 80s but in recent times they’ve been hard to spot.

All that is changing with the present Spartans training group.  Under Paul Raimbault and Grant Stenhouse, together with a growing number of assistant coaches, a critical mass of young runners is resulting in some excellent performances.  Year on year our young Spartans are turning in better performances at county and now at national level.

As Aldershot, Farnham & District have shown in recent years there is no magic bullet, no secret ingredient, to producing good runners.  First of all you need dedicated coaches who know what they’re doing and who are willing to put the work in.  Then the runners will come in increasing numbers; a few will have success and those few raise the bar for others to emulate.  Guernsey have done this well for years but the signs are that the tables are, at last, being turned.

On Thursday they held 800m time trials to see how the athletes were faring after their winter’s work.  With some estimation of previous PBs almost all the runners set new marks which has got to be good news ahead of the new CI Championships in a couple of weeks time, and the county championships after that.  The times were – Elliot Dorey 2.00, Toby Edwards & Aaron Turmel 2.04, Chloe Turmel 2.20, Philip Maguire & Jack Peggie 2.23, Gemma Gothard 2.30, Sam Brown 2.32, Jack Leerson, Alice Bain & Brooke Lidster 2.33, Will Brown 2.36, Catherine Billington & Catherine Heavan 2.39, Yasmin Lookess 2.38, Sam Maher 2.42, Kane Hendrie & Florence Gothard 2.46, David Raimbault & Oliver Turner 2.47, Todd Buesnel 2.48.  (I didn’t enter but I reckon 3.30-ish?)

The other cluster of excellence and one that is totally ignored are the throwers.  Quite why there are so few taking the opportunity to follow in the footsteps of Lauren, Jamie, Zane, Kathryn & Shadine I’m not sure.  Top GB coach John Hillier is over on a regular basis and is a free resource for both athletes and coaches.  Why are people not flocking to get involved?  This week John has brought Zane’s training partner Lawrence Okoye over for a spot of warm-weather training.  Lawrence was going nowhere until Zane got him involved with John.  On Tuesday, amongst many throws that crashed into the cage, Lawrence nailed one down the middle throwing the senior 2kg discus (Lawrence,like Zane, is still an U20.)  Unusually John had it measured – it had left a nice mark.  64 metres, topping Brett Morse’s GB senior best in 2010.  I’m looking forward to seeing what Lawrence produces in competition this summer.

As it usually is, the annual Spartan bash last night was good fun.  To my surprise this was the eleventh Presentation Dinner that we’ve held since the format was upgraded.  There were 80 or so at The Bar, a good turnout at what was quite short notice.  As usual it was the road runners who turned out in strength – the trackies are usually too young or are away at Uni.  Due to austerity measures however there was no special guest present bringing to an end the run of 10 Olympic athletes who have graced our presence.  Even our own Colin Campbell, summer and winter Olympic athlete, cried off late in the day.  Never mind, President Richard Wilkinson kept us entertained as usual dropping his copious notes everywhere and spinning jokes more suitable for a stag night than a family occasion.

Of course there were many good things to report about 2010.  But nevertheless there has been inertia within the club for too long now.  OK money is tight but there is much that can be done which is not being done, without money. Membership has dropped to a dangerously low level.  Development is not happening with the intensity that once was the case.  People are waiting for ‘something to happen’ rather than trying to make it happen.

Nonetheless, and speaking to Michele Leerson this morning, I perceived that one or two people on Committee have realised this and there is, at last, a little more energy around.  Let’s hope so unless the huge gains the sport has made in the last decade are not to be frittered away.

I believe that we owe it to the likes of Peter Drinkwater.  Back in the late 70s it was Peter who was one of the main agitators for change in local athletics, especially in the provision of decent facilities and a pathway from schools to senior athletics.  He was also a pretty damn good runner and still holds the Island 3000m record.  Long since departed these shores he still teaches in Western Australia.  He tells me that he has been recently diagnosed with type 2 diabetes which has just galvanised him into hitting the gym rather than just sit back and take the meds.