Patten emerging at GRUFC

GUERNSEY have been forced into a reshuffle as they look for their third win of the London Three South-West season. The major changes for tomorrow's away trip to KCS Old Boys come on the wings where regular starters Barry Goude and Jim Rowe are both suffering from injuries.

Goude cracked a rib in training on Tuesday while Rowe has a bad back as well as having been struck down by flu in the last couple of days.

That means that Mark Elliott, a replacement last week, will play outside his brother, Jim, while there is a debut for Australian newcomer Cameron Patten.

Another change sees Adam Shields start at flanker as Darren Jones has work commitments.

KCS Old Boys have one point from their three games, earned last Saturday in a 15-15 draw at Effingham and Leatherhead.

Their two defeats have come at the hands of Dorking and Tottonians, who are both unbeaten so far, with the match against the latter being decided by just one point.

'This early in the season you cannot let the league table distort things too much,' Bailey said.

'We are playing away from home and I am sure it will be a tough game.

'We have been disrupted by injury, but we are playing hard rugby and in a period of seven games over successive weekends, you are bound to get a few knocks.

'It is quite nice that we have still got the core of our squad available and it will be good to see if the guys coming in can make an impact.'

The Sarnians go into this weekend's fixture off the back of a Jekyll and Hyde performance in their 22-21 victory over Winchester a week ago.

'It was pretty disastrous in the first half, pretty fantastic in the second,' said Bailey.

'Our composure in coming back from 21-5 down at half-time can only be commended, but we will not get away with another first half performance like that so we want to come flying out of the blocks this time.

'In this league, there are no bad forward packs. It is the backline where you can separate teams and that's where we can exploit our strengths.'

Guernsey starting XV: Simon Sharrott, Laurence Hill-Tout, James Webber,

Dave McGall, David Harvey, Carl Gardner, Adam Shields, James Regnard, Rob Brazier, Jordan Reynolds,

Ben Le Huray, Jim Elliott, Cameron Patten, Mark Elliott, Andy Bailey.