LISTEN: Steve Sharman on the future of Guernsey sport
GUERNSEY has to do a better job in fully utilising its sporting facilities.
Talking on this week’s Guernsey Press Sports Podcast, Sports Commission relationship manager Steve Sharman said that there was a stack of evidence to suggest the island has been wasteful and lacking an overall plan, while swimming pools, pitches and courts are underused.
Looking ahead to sporting requirements for the next few decades, Sharman said the facility issue made for a ‘really interesting next 20 years’.
‘The next three, four, five, six years over here will dictate the direction of some certain sports. There will be facility developments on the island but we have to get those right and we haven’t always got those things right for various reasons.
‘Some of them are down to cost-cutting, but also a real lack of understanding as to what the facility is really there for. You decide afterwards, rather than deciding before.
‘I think in 20-30 years’ time if the work we are doing within the Sports Commission continues, our currently young population will have experienced and will have a better understanding, knowledge and skill attribution, to decide what they want to do and the activities and sports organisations will be there to welcome them.’
Overall, Sharman considers sport to be ‘in a positive state’.
But, he added, more studied investigation was required.
‘We know that some of the facilities we have built have cost the taxpayer an awful amount of money and are being used for an incredibly small amount of time.
‘We [the commisssion] have done this piece of work and at the moment we have Amy Fallaize employed as a research officer and she is doing a great piece of work on a facility audit for the whole island.
‘But I did a piece of facility work in 2019 and looked at a snapshot [of it]. I was absolutely amazed at the facilities we had that were being underused and there was a combination of reasons behind that.
‘People weren’t looking at the whole vision. They were looking at their own thing.
‘But actually, we need to look at how we can look at this in a much wider piece.’
On the plus side, Sharman highlighted that Beau Sejour is now being used by the Town primary schools and La Mare High is also utilising those facilities which aren’t being used in the day.
‘There is a real need to better the facilities we have and learn from the mistakes.’
