CGAJ Honorary Treasurer

Name: Paul Huddlestone

Paul is a Chartered Accountant and took up his post as Honorary Treasurer of the Association in 2003. He is a keen lover of all sports, but his first love was always football and Manchester United, closely followed by cricket and Lancashire in his younger days, during the sixties living in Manchester. His love of football was curtailed when moving to a rugby playing grammar school, which also included playing lacrosse. The summer months introduced him to athletics, but cricket still dominated these months. Paul continued his exploits in football and cricket playing for Sheffield University and his cricket gave him some interesting experiences of playing on some tricky wickets in the Derbyshire villages!

His sporting career then took a new dimension after qualifying as an accountant and moving to The Bahamas to take up a post as an auditor in a foreign land. His footballing exploits reached their peak with representative honours for The Bahamas and his highlight was playing against the New York Cosmos in their pre-season friendlies in The Bahamas. The Cosmos team included many seasoned international professionals from the European scene of the late seventies.

As his footballing career finished, Paul looked for a new sport to keep himself fit and became involved in the local road running club in Nassau. Whilst competing in many local road races, his first marathon was run in New York and he has now completed over 25 marathons covering North America and Europe, including several London's! His success in breaking the 3 hour barrier a few times has been his highlight here. Despite his body telling him otherwise, he is still continuing to compete at this challenging distance, albeit within his new age group!

On arriving in Jersey in the mid eighties, Paul had by now felt it time to settle down with his family. His priorities necessarily changed and his 3 boys then involved him in other sports, particularly swimming, where he became firstly Treasurer and then President of their local club, which included involving travelling with them for competition in the English Speedo League Division 1 and ultimately taking him down the road to being a qualified Judge for swimming competition. He then moved on to become Treasurer and then President of Jersey Amateur Swimming Association. It was at this time he was asked to be the Attache for the Jersey team at the Manchester 2002 Commonwealth Games and he had a wonderful experience at the Games in his home town.

After Paul's appointment as Treasurer of the Association shortly thereafter, he became very involved in Association matters, being one of the members of the group appointed to rewrite the Constitution of the Association. He was then given the honour of acting as General Team Manager to the largest ever Jersey team to attend the Games in Melbourne 2006 and thoroughly enjoyed his involvement in leading the trip down under.

His long suffering wife, Dianne, is also a keen sports enthusiast, and she is looking forward to having more leisure time now the boys have almost left home!!