Guernsey Press

President's timely return for a party

THE performance may have been scratchy but there was still much to cheer about GRFC's narrow win at home to Gravesend last Saturday. Not least that club president Adie Le Page (pictured) was up and about and looking no worse for wear after his recent health scare.

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THE performance may have been scratchy but there was still much to cheer about GRFC's narrow win at home to Gravesend last Saturday. Not least that club president Adie Le Page (pictured) was up and about and looking no worse for wear after his recent health scare.

It will also cheer him to know that a namesake was the club's very first captain when the Guernsey Rugby Club was founded 100 years ago this coming week.

G. W. Le Page was the man in question and, just like Adie a century on, he was referred to as 'an old rugby player' in the Press report which marked the club's foundation.

Interestingly enough, that meeting held at the Chamber of Commerce Room in the High Street on 26 February 1913, also notes that the club colours would be green-and-white hoops, a specific two-and-a-half inches in width.

Bearing that in mind, Inside Track has the temerity to suggest that perhaps next season the club marks its first 100 years by playing in a similar strip.

To what extent the modern-day club plans to celebrate the occasion is not known, but it still has a few weeks on its side to mark that very first game, which was on Thursday 6 March against the resident troop, the Royal Irish, at Cambridge Park.

The team selected for the occasion read: Maunder; Tooley, Le Page, McCrea, Wills; Collings, Walker; Hulme, Ward, Chubb, McHuraith, Leale, Waterman, MacAvoy and Guilbert.

They were most probably not very good, as the foundation report indicates.

In 2013, Blair Campbell's team can make the most of the superb indoor facilities at the on-site High Performance Strength and Conditioning Centre, but the 1913 rugger boys had to go to much greater lengths to prepare.

The first committee publicly stated its willingness to help the players 'hold practices to form scrums and to learn passing', But for that to happen they would have to collect 'the ball', kept at Mr A. Maunder's in the Pollet, on the production of a membership card.

A few weeks later, in early April, the Guernsey club took themselves off to play Jersey for the first time, although it was not for the Siam Cup. That particular challenge was still some years off.

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EVERY time those Jersey Jets crop up on Report Sport, our netballers could shake with envy.

'Why can't we have a cosy, indoor hall to play,' would be the thought running through their heads.'

Sports department colleague Matt Lihou was thinking the very same thing after freezing his proverbials reporting Wednesday's big Division One game between Resolution IT and Nerine B.

Now he knows how hardy you need to be to be a Guernsey netballer.

Beau Sejour on a midweek evening in the midst of winter can be a very inhospitable place, but the Guernsey Netball Association have no choice. They have to use it.

Simple funding, other sports bookings and an under-size court, prevent the GNA from utilising Beau Sejour in the manner Team Jets can use at Les Ormes, and until a suitable indoor venue can be found it will be difficult for the GNA to develop the sport to its full potential.

The school gyms at the Grammar and St Sampson's High are, say the GNA, of little use because there is only one court per venue and to use them for league matches would splinter the sport. Ideally a venue with room for three courts, or two at a minimum, is what the GNA needs.

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