‘Le G’ – the captain of quiet class and distinction

But at the age of 66 this stylish, always slim, versatile Muratti captain from the late 1970s and into the ’80s, has been taken down by a long illness. He died last Friday evening.

The 14 Muratti caps, five winners’ medals, two as captain, and numerous club triumphs, including two Priaulx League and Upton triumphs, tell just half his story.

Whether it was in central midfield or in the heart of defence, ‘Le G’ led even though off the pitch he always had a gentle manner, quiet in voice and hugely popular wherever he went.

Tall, strong in the air and with a neat and sweet left foot, his senior career started with one late season appearance in 1972 and ended 458 club games later in 1996.

While predominantly a Saints man, he also served North in his early post-junior years and ended it with a short spell as Sylvans’ first-team coach.

All told, he made 49 Island appearances and scored 94 goals in all club and representative football.

In his junior days, the Boys’ Grammar student won the Star Trophy and, later, a Junior Muratti. When finally capped at senior level, his dominance over the Caesareans remained laughingly impressive for a long while.

It was in his first season back at Blanche Pierre Lane, after five campaigns at Northfield, that he won his first Muratti caps at the end of the 1977-78 season.

After coming on as a substitute in the 12-0 semi-final destruction of Alderney, he was a shock choice as Peter Blondel’s centre-back partner for the final at Springfield.

Coach Art Le Page and his deputy, Jim Cooley, called it perfectly because he was brilliant as Guernsey triumphed 2-0 with a pair of Nigel Le Page strikes.

The Island selectors said afterwards that it was after a friendly with Cambridge United that they opted to play Le Gallez to Blondel’s left.

‘We weren’t entirely happy with any of the defensive formations we’d tried,’ said Le Page at the time.

‘Kev is a great player and we knew he’d do a job for us wherever we fielded him,’ he added.

Le Gallez got the top rating from Rex Bennet, scoring nine out of 10 as he and Blondel kept quiet an attack consisting of Brent Pitman, Rory Crick and Peter Fleury.

‘Five-nil massacre’ was the Press headline the following year and with ‘Le G’ as captain in the heart of defence, he lifted the trophy after a 5-0 thrashing of Jersey at the Track.

The captain opened the floodgates with a towering header on his old mate Rod Webb’s corner.

In the ratings, the Saints man got another nine, only surpassed by Blondel’s perfect 10.

A year later he made it a hat-trick of winners’ medals and with the Star Trophy and Junior Muratti before that, had now beaten Jersey five times out of five.

The 1980 game was best remembered for the double sending off of Blondel and Jersey’s Peter Vincenti. When that happened, Le Gallez dropped back from his midfield role to produce another brilliant defensive display in a 2-1 triumph after extra-time.

Afterwards, an elated skipper said: ‘We had 13 heroes. It was the hardest game I’ve ever played in. What a great comeback... It showed we had a lot of character.’

By then Jim Cooley had taken over as Muratti coach and 40 years on he had this to say about his skipper: ‘He was a superb captain, a good leader of a team and a nice person with it.’

Cooley, who would also coach Le Gallez at Blanche Pierre, recalls a player who was ‘really competitive and in the middle of the park everything was his. He was always easy to work with.’

As for the decision to switch him into the back four against Jersey, Cooley said it was no big deal. ‘He could get up [in the air] and was adaptable. He could play in most positions.’

No multiple-capped Muratti man ever wins all the time, though, and he suffered the disappointment of two losses on the bounce before rediscovering that winning feeling in 1983, back in the heart of defence alongside a restored skipper Blondel.

In 1988, the Saints veteran put in another star performance, walking away with the Ossie Eloury man-of-the-match trophy after a battling 1-0 triumph at Springfield.

‘Le Gallez’s loyalty rewarded with M-O-M award’ shouted the Press headlines the following Saturday, Bennet recalling that he deserved it not only for his eight out of 10 display – there were no nines that day – but for the ‘commendable loyalty he had shown to the Island and its manager’.

Bennet went on: ‘He was among the players who had disagreed with Tony Blondel over a matter of principle, involving the choice of trainees, but like the others he had pushed his personal feelings into the background in the interests of the island.’

His final Muratti appearance was a crushing 4-0 loss at home in 1989, by which time he was acting as player-coach at St Martin’s and trying to cope with recovering from a bad injury which ruled him out of most of the season.

Colin Fallaize, who spent so much of his career playing alongside him with North, Saints and the Island side, said he was a ‘very intelligent player’.

He added: ‘As a captain he didn’t need to shout. He always gave it everything.’

Henry Davey, who was in the very first Saints side Le Gallez featured in and saw most of his 327 games for the black-and-whites, said he was ‘always a Saints boy’.

‘He was as hard as nails and the strongest part of his game was his positional play. He always seemed to be in the right place at the right time.

‘In midfield his distribution was superb and he didn’t give the ball away very often.’

It was on a Saints tour to the UK that their captain excitedly looked forward to playing a game against the club he followed – Fulham.

But he picked up an injury in the weekend’s opening game against QPR U18s and he was ruled out of the Fulham match played on the magnificent Bank of England ground at Roehampton.

Brother ‘Billy’ took his place, recalled Davey.