Guernsey pay the price for original sins

Jersey 1, Guernsey 0

MURATTI football creates heroes and villains in equal measure. Guernsey's unfortunate full-back Simon Johns joined the ranks of the latter yesterday as a cruel twist of Muratti fate landed on his shoulders.

His spectacular own goal, an extraordinary volley from 15 yards out, was a fittingly dramatic way to end 210 minutes of enthralling action - but even the most hard-nosed Jerseyman had to feel Johns' pain as he sobbed tears of defeat at the final whistle.

Ruled out of last year's clash by a late injury, Johns will be cursing his latest luckless Muratti experience and will no doubt be full of recriminations today, full of heartache, full of what ifs.

His error will inevitably be focussed on as the deciding factor, but the truth was that Johns should not have shouldered all or even most of the blame.

The responsibility for defeat must be shared by a set of players who will know in their hearts that they let down themselves and the legion of over 500 Guernsey supporters who travelled to Springfield.

Over the two matches, Colin Fallaize's side simply made too many mistakes to win the biggest prize in the Channel Islands sporting calendar.

The blunders could be traced back to the latter period of the first half of the original game at Foote's Lane, when Guernsey sat back and squandered a fantastic opening.

Then there was the dreadful defending that led to Jersey's first equaliser, the missed chances to put the game beyond them and, most significantly of all, the two monumental gaffes - lapses in concentration both - that allowed the Caesareans to force a replay when they should have been dead and buried.

The late pain of the first match gave yesterday's replay a rather surreal sense. The job was seconds away from being completed a fortnight ago; there shouldn't have been any need for a rematch. The worry was that Guernsey had shot their bolt and thus it proved.

The visitors lacked bite going forward. As hard as they worked, the front two were shorn of service and those little moments of imagination and improvisation that make chances out of nothing and create Muratti heroes were absent.

Guernsey actually ended with the statistics on their side: one more shot on target, five more off target, two more corners and nearly half the number of free-kicks conceded.

But they were missing the vital coup de grace.

As at Foote's Lane, though, the opening was encouraging, energetic and rousing.

Danny Bisson should have put the green-and-whites a goal up after just eight minutes. He lost his marker in the six-yard box and looked certain to head in Chris Chamberlain's brilliant inswinging cross from the left, but he misdirected his effort and it trickled agonisingly wide.

Ryan Tippett, who held up the ball well up top but didn't get the sort of ammunition on which he thrives, engineered a good chance for himself on 20 minutes. After beating two defenders, he drove his shot a fraction wide.

But perhaps Guernsey's best chances of the promising first 25 minutes were from set pieces, of which they had three, all in terrific central positions around the edge of the 18-yard box.

Chamberlain clipped an excellent effort towards the top corner in the second minute, but he found only the posse of green-draped supporters behind the goal rather than his intended target.

The other two free-kicks from similar positions were executed woefully and flew high and wide of Jamie Brewster's goal.

Such superb early opportunities in such a tight and tense game and not once had Brewster been forced to make a save. Guernsey's profligate reputation, expelled briefly a fortnight ago, was coming back to haunt them.

As those wasted chances became merely disappointing memories, Jersey settled down and the tide began to turn. Their central midfield two - Peter Edwards and Bradley Vowden - began to master their opponents, Matt Warren and Steve Brehaut. Ultimately, Edwards and Vowden would stake good claims for the man of the match trophy.

Jersey's meaningful moments of the first half came out of deep crosses or long balls forward.

Vowden came close to hammering home a far-post knock down in the 12th minute and recalled centre-back Ryan Lumsden nearly opened the scoring with a header from 12 yards out after 19 minutes.

The ball that one could see would hurt Guernsey - the pass into the channels, making the visitors' one-paced markers get involved in a sprint towards their own goal - was employed seldom in the opening period.

The final action of the first half forced Brewster into a magnificent save. He tipped over a powerful Warren header from 16 yards that looked destined for the roof of the net.

The second half was a little disappointing as a spectacle and was pretty abysmal as far as Guernsey's display was concerned.

My notebook remained empty, save for the oft-scribbled terms 'no imagination' or 'no spark' or 'no creativity', until Johns' 69th minute howler.

It all looked so innocuous as Mark Ray's driven ball in from the left evaded Jersey's forwards and seemed likely to drift harmlessly across the pitch. Then Johns, running with his front towards his own goal, lashed at the cross, caught it wrongly and sent the ball whizzing past Jody Bisson and into the back of his net.

Fallaize joked afterwards that he would have been proud to have struck a goal as sweetly as that, but the humour was lost on poor Johns, who, quite wrongly, will probably feel like crawling into a hole in the ground for the next few days.

After burying his head into the slick Springfield turf for a few seconds immediately after realising the enormity of his luckless attempted clearance, Johns picked himself up and was as reliable, positive and composed as usual for the remaining 21 minutes.

The same was true of his teammates, who bounced back by upping their work rate.

But the spark was still missing; a couple of wasted free-kicks and two low drives wide of the goal was all that Guernsey could muster.

Nonetheless, for all of their paucity of attacking composure, Guernsey should have been given the chance to draw level a few minutes after going behind when Chamberlain was brought down in the penalty box.

It looked like a penalty and referee Clive Wilkes admitted afterwards that 'there was contact and he might have been touched', but ridiculously he decided not to award a spot kick because 'the foul wasn't intentional'. What nonsense.

Lady Luck was definitely working against Guernsey.

But they say that you make your own luck - and Fallaize's side just didn't do enough to justify bringing home the Vase.