‘Winning Priaulx would be pinnacle’

But to coach a winning Priaulx League side would be the ultimate, says Sylvans’ first-team coach Martyn de Garis, who saw a flooded Port Soif pitch deny his team the opportunity to go top of the table on Saturday.

Had it transpired – and it may yet soon enough – the manner in which de Garis has turned around fortunes at St Peter’s is mightily impressive.

Short on squad depth and with U18s forming a large proportion of his group, de Garis’ Sylvans were predicted, by many, to finish in the lower half of the table.

Early season form pointed at those predictions being right, but an unbeaten run stretching back 12 games and three and a half months, has seen Sylvans ease up the table and become serious challengers.

The coach refuses to get carried away but believes his young charges have got the talent to go all the way. And if they did?

‘Certainly, without doubt, it would be the pinnacle of my career,’ he said.

‘It would top anything else off.’

‘Just to have built something from what we had just two seasons ago and go on to where we are, is good,’ said the man who celebrated his 50th birthday this season at where else but St Peter’s, where he has spent so much of his life in football.

‘ But if we were to finish in the top three, or top two, it would still be an amazing achievement,’ he noted yesterday.

Having been lured back to St Peter’s by his brother Paul, who soon quit due to pressure of work, the elder brother quickly saw the extent of the task facing him.

‘I remember being at pre-season at Les Beaucamps and there was just seven or eight of us. We had to pull out of the Rawlinson because we didn’t have enough players signed on.’

Yet, by clever utilisation of the club’s latest crop of fine youth talent, some astute signings and with the aid of valued assistant coaches Mike Garnett and John Collenette, Sylvans more than survived last campaign.

This season, the team growth has continued but de Garis is not getting ahead of himself and said he is ‘wary’ of what rival clubs have got in their armoury. A slide back down the table is to be guarded against as much as finding that short and prized route to the summit.