The experienced heads have gone, but youth has advantages, by Rob Batiste

TWO years ago Guernsey's T20 team made the short hop over to Jersey for the climax of the European T20 Championships and made a hash of things.

And we did it with an experienced side too.

Next week, Nic Pothas leads a squad into the next Division One T20 championships with a squad barely recognisable to the one that could not cut the mustard in 2011.

With the evidence of two years ago – poor in every area, but complacent as much as anything else – it would be easy to write off the young squad who practise in the Hove nets today before back-to-back warm-ups against Eastbourne tomorrow and the real thing come Monday.

We go with no Stuart Le Prevost, Lee Savident, Gary Rich and Tim Ravenscroft – years of experience and talent abound.

So if we could not do the business with them on board, how can we hope to do it this time with a squad largely full of under-23s?

I will tell you possibly how, with the best of preparation, top commitment, stacks of youthful talent, energy to burn, agility and fitness.

Pothas's team should feel no pressure as they are, realistically, not top contenders in the way they were in 2011.

This correspondent, for one, is eager to see them perform as a group, because I suspect it will be as a unit that the success will be gained.

Success next week should be viewed as consolidation ahead of triumph in 2015 when some of these exciting youngsters will then be men.

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THERE will be an excuse. There always is. Just when their football section is making admirable attempts to raise standards and add to the excellence of their trophy-laded youth section, Rovers' cricket side – and their flagship one too – is hitting the buffers.

This week the club with the most number of Evening League title wins and once an almost unbeatable force, conceded a walkover to the 2013 Division One favourites, St Pierre.

The word is that with a number of first-team players unavailable, their second-teamers declined to fill in. One match a week is enough for them.

It's a poor effort, it really is, and a smack in the face for all those within the wider GCB development team who are making great efforts to take the game forward onto new levels and, certainly as far as youth development is concerned, are succeeding quite spectacularly in my view.

Of course, it is too easy for any team to simply not ruck-up and hand over the points. It is painless and, generally, it will go unnoticed.

But that does not make it right and the Inside Track viewpoint is that clubs should be made to think again, and again, by such actions, in the knowledge that there is a whopping great fine coming their way if they do.

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POOR Garry Collins. Any other local sportsman who wins a national title would be lauded till our endangered Guernsey Cows come home.

But, in this unfair world we live in, not so the bowls-loving deputy.

Once again the Vale man has been hauled over the coals for putting bowls before his day job. He seems to have few friends at the moment, but I will support him anyway.

And why?

Qualification for the British Isles Bowls Championships is, in that sport, a big deal. To win the British Isles title, albeit in the company of three mates, is a very big deal.

Collins has done something very special, so get off his back.

He's not daft though.

He will have known that flying to Dublin and missing the latter stages of the States meeting would cause a fuss, as it did last time.

It may even be the death-knell for his political career.

But having qualified alongside his regular fours teammates, Collins stuck with them when they could not find an adequate replacement.

I like that idea of loyalty, and the Guernsey public and his fellow politicians should appreciate it too.

He won't be the first politician to duck out of a States meeting and were I one of his parishioners, I would not be bothered in the slightest.

I'd be more concerned as to whether he is a good politician, and on that score I'll leave others to judge.