Saints ready for big CS Two clash

LE MONT SAINT comfortably took care of the island juniors in the Yorkshire Guernsey Division One as they look forward to meeting close rivals Collins Stewart Two next week. Saints' victory, by a score of 94-56 at Beau Sejour, was never really in doubt as their island centre, Mike Beausire, proved to be too much to handle for the depleted under-21 side.

Despite the ease of the win, Saints' player-coach James Tracey was not overly happy afterwards.

Next Wednesday Tracey's team face more of a challenge when they take on Collins Stewart Two in what promises to be a real humdinger of a match.

'It was a frustrating game,' said the New Zealander.

'The juniors were a bit sloppy defensively and it got a bit scrappy as they tried to get under our skin. I like a hard physical game but honest as well.

'I expect to have a full team out against Collins. That should be a good game and I'm really looking forward to it.'

The 6ft 8in. Beausire put Saints into the driving seat as the juniors struggled to contain his inside presence.

He notched up 12 points by himself in the opening quarter as he seemed to be on the end of every move his team put together.

As he was rested in the second, Mark Barnett and Jan Renouf picked up the slack for Saints, although the juniors' island squad member for the Rhodes Island Games, Jason Hooper, did pick some valuable points to keep his team in touch.

A three-pointer in the last minute of the half from Tracey gave Saints a 43-34 lead at half-time.

The third quarter proved to be the turning point in the match as Barnett and Beausire kick-fired the whites ahead.

Going into the final 10min. 66-45 behind, the juniors' heads dropped as their opponents outscored them in the fourth to win by 38 points.

Beausire top-scored with 25 points for the victors as Hooper picked up the same number for the juniors.

The honours were shared when Manzur and Brock Road met twice in the week.

Firstly in the Division Two Knockout it was Brock who were celebrating come the end of the match with the score 67-61 in their favour.

Manzur took an early lead at 11-2 but their opponents recovered to narrow the gap to three points at the end of the opening period.

Second quarter and it was Manzur's guard Joel de Woolfson who shone as he increased his team's advantage to seven points at half time at 36-29.

The youth club mounted a comeback in the third as Manzur missed a number of free throws, making just four from 10.

The lead changed hands a couple of times before Brock's big man Scott Rowe started to put his mark on the game to ensure his team finally took the honours.

Rowe finished up with 25 points but a twisted ankle in the final moments ensured that he was not in the ranks for their league match with the same opponents.

And it was a different story as Manzur welcomed back Dan Cooper who linked up well with his fellow guard, de Woolfson, to ensure their side ran home winners at 72-49.

Cooper finished with 15 points and de Woolfson ended up with 23 to go with the 20 that he scored in the cup match.

'Brock Road are a very good young team, they've played together for a long time and a couple of their players will be playing for the island in a few years,' said de Woolfson.

'We expected to lose the knockout game as we had only six players and we were missing Cooper, who is arguably our best player.

'The league game was a funny one as they were missing their best big man, Scott Rowe, and we thought we should beat them because we had Cooper back and we had our best team out.

'But we didn't expect to beat them so comfortably.'

In the Development League, Collins Stewart Juniors overcame Central Sports 47-27, Dee-Caf Dreamers lost to RGF 32-73 and RBC trounced Kleinwort Benson 64-22 who then went on to beat Les Camps Eagles 33-26.