Guernsey Press

‘The better side won’, admits Guernsey boss

Tony Vance was honest in the aftermath of another Muratti defeat on Saturday.

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Delight and despair: Jersey celebrate their Muratti Vase final victory over Guernsey on Saturday at Footes Lane. (Picture by Sophie Rabey, 32113827)

‘At the end of the day we didn’t do enough,’ said the reluctant Guernsey manager after a fourth successive defeat, extending the trophy-less run to six years.

Guernsey took the lead through Will Fazakerley but were then pegged back by Jersey, who dominated the second half with Luke Campbell scoring both their goals in a 2-1 win.

‘Jersey were stronger and fitter than us today,’ said Vance. ‘They were the better team.'

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‘You need that second goal, that killer goal, and we let them back in with a soft penalty, really poor from us, and then we got caught on the back post again. Poor goals, but we’d be clutching at straws if we felt that we deserved to take it to extra time.

‘We were on the wrong end of some key decisions today but it didn’t cost us the game, we weren’t good enough, in the second half, for sure.’

Vance now sets his sights on getting his squad to bounce back for the Island Games in eight weeks’ time.

‘We’ve got a lot of hard work to do. The players need a little break but we’ve got some hard work to do and we’ll come back fighting.’

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Martin Cassidy was in the dug out for Jersey for the final time and was delighted with another success.

‘They really worked hard for it. Second half Guernsey couldn’t cope with us, and we might have scored a couple more goals. It was a masterful performance,’ he said.

‘It means a lot to the players, you can see that in the effort that they put in, but I just think we had the quality and the better players in the right areas and a better game-plan today to try and play through them, identify one-v-ones where we could try and hurt them and we did that well, especially in the second half.’

In the preceding Women’s Muratti, Jersey retained the trophy with a 4-1 victory.