Alvarez’s experience key in the Westerners’ rebuild

Paul de Garis, their head coach, has been around long enough to know that success for the Westerners this season most probably does not involve parading trophies and it will be the likes of North, their hosts in game one, gunning for those.

A cup run, perhaps a final, but ultimately he is setting his sights lower and a one-rung improvement on the nine-team ladder.

Joe Alvarez is back from his travels to captain the side and with exciting young keeper Kyle de Garis back on island indefinitely, there is reason to back the coach’s target of climbing from eighth to seventh come the season’s end.

It’s a period of rebuilding at St Peter’s where the de Garis brothers – Paul again being assisted by elder brother Martyn –will at least be cheered by the large number of emerging U18s, which is something few island clubs can boast these days.

But, points won’t come easy for the red-and-whites which wasn’t, of course, the problem when Paul was between the sticks for much of the club’s glory years.

Sylvans have picked up a useful recruit in defender Ben Langlois from St Martin’s, but it is the return to Alvarez to offset the loss of Seb Smeed to studies in America which is key to Sylvans’ quest for improvement.

‘We’re happy to an extent, although we’ve lost Aaron Ferbrache to Rangers, so it pretty much will be the same as last season.

‘Joe’s our captain and hopefully he will remain injury free. It would have been nice to see him and ‘’Smeedy’’ play together, which would really have given us options.

‘Joe is very talented and he is that little bit older now. He played for GFC in the earlier years, he’s got that experience at a higher level and hopefully he can show some leadership qualities on the pitch. He also gets on with all the players, which is important as well. Hopefully, the responsibility will give him a little bit more impetus.’

It will, though, be a young first team with integration of homegrown youth clearly important to everyone at the club.

‘One of the first things I wanted to do when I came in is to link the club a little bit more from top to bottom.

‘There seemed to be a bit of a gap between seniors and juniors, so I’ve been working closer with John Collenette the U18 coach.

‘We had no U18 team last year but now we have got 18 signed up, so one of the things is giving younger players opportunities.

‘At one point last year I gave four of our U16s debuts in one game, but there is an open invite now for all the U18s to come training with us.’

De Garis acknowledges that the defence needs to be tightened.

‘After I took over we scored, on average, two goals per game, but we conceded 2.9.

‘We got punished heavily on the individual mistakes and did not help ourselves.

‘Any improvement on last season will be great, but it is a hard task. Football has changed,’ he says with more than hint of frustration that the modern player is not, in general, as committed to improvement as in his own playing days.

Besides this evening’s opener, four more first teams are in FNB Priaulx League action tomorrow.

Rangers entertain St Martin’s on the KGV 3G and Manzur host Vale Rec at Northfield.

Both games kick off at 2pm.