Island youngsters do new player/coach proud

SONIA GRANT-YENDELL made a promising start to her tenure as Guernsey player/coach at the weekend despite having a depleted squad. Considering that she had numerous regulars unavailable, including regular island captain Lorna Brown, to come away from her first English Counties League double-header with a win and a loss was a decent achievement.

'We nearly did not go away because we were very short of players,' said Grant-Yendell.

'When you look at last year's squad, we had only three players from that group going away this time. We had Lorna and Lois Batiste unavailable and that was a big blow because they are experienced players so that really left me, Claire Queripel and Tanya Gibson playing from the regular squad.

'We knew that was going to make it difficult.'

But the young guns that the coach brought in did her proud.

In their first match against Somerset, Guernsey pulled off an excellent 44-40 victory and although that was followed by a 31-51 reverse at the hands of Hereford, Grant-Yendell said that there were many positives for her to take from the trip.

'Somerset were new to our ECL division so we did not know what to expect whereas with Hereford, who we had beaten last year, we knew how tough that would be,' she said.

'To get a win under our belts in the first game was a really positive note to start on because, realistically, we knew we were going to struggle.

'The girls were disappointed with the loss to Hereford because if we had had more of our full squad available, we would have given them a good run for their money, if not won the game. But those games are ones you have to put down to experience.'

Grant-Yendell, who was assisted by Gill Queripel on the sidelines while the player-manager was on court, reserved special praise for her teenagers.

'In general I was pleased. The girls worked very well as a unit considering they have not all played together before. We only had three training sessions before we went away, we have not has as many as we would have liked because this will be a new and different set-up,' she said.

'We had two 15-year-olds - Kerri Brown and Zola Bourgaize - and 14-year-old Lindsay Bougourd and they all played their part.

'Zola played all four quarters of both games, Kerri played all the Somerset game and three quarters against Hereford.

'Lindsay came on and played two quarters of the Hereford game and she played with a fantastic maturity.

'She was fast, nimble and popped the goals in.'

Guernsey's next double header in the ECL is on 8-9 January when they will play Isle of Wight and league leaders East Dorset.