Firstly we hope this message finds you and your family well in what are very difficult times for everyone.

As some of you may be aware, next years’ Island Games is in Guernsey from the 3rd to 9th July. As has been the case for the last few games cycles, a qualification period with set standards came into effect on 1st January this year to allow us to provisionally select a Team by the end of the summer outdoor season. With the current lockdown and cessation of all organised sport, training and competition for what will probably be a protracted period of time, the Island Games Team Management and coaches have been working on revising the Selection Policy and how we might still be able to select a Team with little or no competitive athletics for the remainder of the year.

In a departure from the normal process, we are asking any athlete who wishes to be considered for inclusion in the “long squad” to self-nominate via the Declaration of Intent form on the last page of the revised policy document below. If you believe you are or could be at the required standard by the time of the Games next year, then we would ask that you give this some serious consideration and discuss it with your coach(es). There are eligibility criteria that all potential athletes need to adhere to and these are detailed in the document along with the original qualification standards which will give you an idea of the level of competition. Please remember that this is a week-long senior international competition, but that should not deter someone with the aptitude and attitude to succeed. These forms need to be returned by Wednesday 6th May 2020. The Selection Panel will then meet to go through all the Declarations and then feedback individually to each athlete. As well as looking at previous Games and Championships performances, we will looking at most recent form and other ways athletes can confirm their progression towards the required standards of a Games athlete where this isn’t possible in formal competition environments. We will then come up with a plan which will be monitored over the next few months until the provisional Team is selected in late August 2020. After this provisional selection, depending upon the status of training and competitive athletics, further plans will be put in place.

We are trying to keep the whole process as transparent as possible and the new selection self-nomination policy will be rolled out across the whole athletics community locally as well as those eligible off island and to those not formally involved in athletics through the club structure. We are also contacting individually all previous Games Athletes from the last 3 Island Games.

We appreciate that the situation is far from ideal, but we are keen to make sure everyone who had/ has aspirations to try for the Games next year, still feels they have the opportunity to do this. We are under no illusions how difficult it is and will be for athletes to train in isolation with no firm goals this season, but we feel by identifying athletes early who have the desire to try and make the Team, we can offer and tailor support to them directly (where required and appropriate) over and above the general training advice they are getting from the Club during the lockdown period.

If you have any questions, please email the Team Manager, David Wagstaff, at dwagstaff1970@gmail.com.