WORTHING TO THE AIRPORT

Worthing Bears basketball team are the only club to have played a competitive match before overseas.

The Guernsey islanders are bound by the rules of the competition to assist their opponents' travelling and accommodation expenses or else play their home ties on the mainland.

Each of the 16 will be contributing 45 to the cost, while around 80 for each one will be paid by their opponents.

Worthing will be put up for the night in a St Peter Port hotel because, said Guernsey's co-ordinator Andrew Graham: "To fly them in and out on a day trip is not exactly sociable and the social side of the game is important.

"But for us to play on the mainland as the home team would overall cost us more. We don't get anything from the National Lottery. People living here are not rich, only those who bank their money here. The players will be the same kind of guys as the Worthing ones: a lot will be young and not high wage earners.

"We make the choice to enter the Trophy so we can't complain. It helps us to develop our hockey at the three clubs we have on the island. It's only seven miles across by four miles, but we have 17 men's teams and seven women's.

"Our two astros are sand-based. The long, hot summers we have mean that there is a hosepipe ban from January, so to have a water-based pitch was not an option."

Guernsey hockey is not devoid of pedigree. John Hurst, the former England goalkeeper, mainly No 2 to Ian Taylor in the 1980s, lives on the island and so does Colin Whalley, who managed Great Britain to an Olympic silver medal.

Football on the island is played in the morning and hockey in the afternoon.

Worthing's flight will touch down at 12.45pm and the game will hit back at 3pm. They could have insisted on a mainland venue.

Team manager Rob Warner explained: "We decided to go because they said they'd help us. Why not? Otherwise, it would have been playing them probably in Exeter and that's a pretty long old journey anyway.

"It's not going to be easy. I think they've got some National League players who come back to play, they're going to have quite a lot of support, while we've got to step off a plane and get ready to play. There'll be a lot of stuff against us."

A small group of Worthing Hockey Club members were planning to charter a plane on a day trip from Shoreham.