At the Marina
 There's
a nice feature as you walk along the side of Jersey Marina
- embedded into the pavement are descriptions of each of the
wind strengths on the Beaufort Scale.
Most of them are pretty intuitive, for example #1 Light
Air, wind felt on face ... #11 Storm, widespread damage.
But #5 Fresh Breeze, a well-conditioned man of war could just
carry the royals in chase ?????
On the other side there are 26
benches giving the "Alpha, Bravo ... Zulu" thing, along
with their morse code and semaphore versions ... and just
in case you don't know where you are, the Longitude and
Latitude are clearly printed on the harbour wall ...
user-friendly, or what ...
Qualifiers get involved with the Kids too
It was an early start for the
players in the qualifying draw on Friday, as they all got
involved with coaching sessions with kids from four local schools
at 9am, before playing their opening matches at 11!
Everyone - players, kids, teachers and spectators - thoroughly
enjoyed themselves, as you can see!
Chris and the Kids
Top seed Chris
Simpson, who hails from the 'other' Channel Island of
Guernsey, arrived on Thursday afternoon and Jersey head coach
and tournament promoter Nick Taylor immediately put him
to work, with a workshop session with a dozen or so kids from
nearby Victoria College School.
After an hour or so of various workouts and on-court sessions,
enjoyed by all, they gathered on the club's new glassback court
for a question and answer session, and the kids had some
brilliant questions - here's a selection:
 what
was your toughest match ? Michael Hopkins when I was
16,in the Guernsey v Jersery inter-insular match on my
home court.
I played out of this world and won in five, but I just wasn't
ready to play at that pace and I was really ill afterwards, I
had to go home to bed so I missed the party!
who is our biggest arch-enemy in squash ? there
are too many to mention!
why did you decide to become a professional squash player
? not for the money ...
what is the most interesting place you've played in ?
Grand Central Station is fantastic, Papua New Guinea was
different!
 |
Eyeing up the statues
these
seabirds are surely intent
on doing something nasty on
these St Hellier landmarks ...
How do you know you're in
Jersey ?
-
You arrive on a plane
with propellors
-
Everywhere is called
"St" something or other
-
There's bits of French
signage dotted about
-
All the car number
plates begin with "J"
-
Yellow phone boxes
-
Your wallet is full of
£1 notes !
Better players than
Goalies ...
Nick had a briefing session with all the qualifying players,
getting them to sign posters and balls which will be
distributed to sponsors and schools - what a great idea - and
then we had a group photo with said balls ...
which ultimately, as the sequence below shows, just went to
prove that some of them aren't very good at catching !
All of these photos
& more in the Gallery
Will to win
he may
be 35 now, but Jersey's Mike Hopkins is still
ultra-competitive - his racket went walkabout at the end of the
three games he lost to Rory Pennell, and at the end of one game
a knowledgeable spectator said he was "looking for a fight
outside ... !!
Explanation of the Day:
"You went back to Kent and back to get that one, Youssef
... NO LET." |
