Crouse lights the touch paper on return to side

Guernsey 37, Old Midwhitgiftian 14

DIVON CROUSE returned to Guernsey colours in scintilating style on Saturday. The diminutive South African scrum half replaced his countryman Hendri Marais at half-time and lit up what had been a stop-start encounter with some electrifying rugby.

Captain Andy Bailey needed no prompting in his praise for the man who has been plying his trade for St Jacques in the JRA League for the past 18 months.

'Divon just upped the tempo of the game when he came on and I thought he was outstanding,' said the Guernsey skipper.

To be fair, several others enjoyed a fine game in a match that the hosts never looked like losing at Foote's Lane.

There was a hat-trick of tries for Jim Elliott, who was typically excellent, while pack leader Peter Miers gets more impressive with every performance.

There were also encouraging signs from the Jordan Reynalds-Dan Taylor-Edwards combination, with each taking turns at fly half and inside centre.

'The idea was not to put a shirt number on their back as such,' Bailey said.

'From open play we wanted Dan to go in at first receiver and have Jordy orchestrating from a more central position.'

Yet it was Crouse who brought the crowd to life after he came on with his side 12-9 to the good.

Old Mid-Whitgiftian had taken the lead in the opening minute after the home side made a mess of trying to deal with the kick-off and Daniel Crouch sweetly struck over a penalty.

The lead lasted less than four minutes, though, as Taylor-Edwards came in at first receiver on halfway and accelerated through a gap in the visitors' defence, drew the last defender and offloaded to Cameron Patten who had a free run to the line. Nick Barton added the extra two points.

Old Mid-Whitgiftian briefly narrowed the gap to one point as the impressive Crouch converted his second penalty but Guernsey were soon celebrating their next try. It arrived in a slightly comical fashion as two Old Mid-Whitgiftian players collided when attempting to catch Barton's up-and-under and James Regnard capitalised by hacking on and collecting to dive over.

They could have had a third before the break had it not been for Crouch's timely interception when Reynalds looked for the inside pass to Taylor-Edwards after making a fine break.

Instead, the visiting fly half reduced the deficit with another penalty three minutes from half-time.

After the turnaround, it was virtually all Guernsey.

Elliott scored the first of his tries on 47min. as he chased down a kick over the top of the black-and-blues defence and nine minutes later Crouse delivered the pass for the same player to score his second.

The visitors rallied briefly, largely thanks to some green-and-white indiscipline, and it was no surprise to see Crouch create a try for second rower Matthew Higgins, but in the last 10 minutes the hosts turned the screw.

Crouse should have had the try he deserved on 72min. after a super break through the smallest of gaps, but somehow Simon Sharrott came up with the ball after he had helped his scrum half over the line.

Moments later the little South African was alert to chase down Reynalds' attempted kick to touch which the wind kept in play.

He got the luck of the bounce and offloaded to Bailey who raced to the line.

The scoring was completed with the 80min. up as the hosts moved the ball delightfully through several pairs of hands from the left wing to the right for Elliott to complete his hat-trick.

'We love playing here and we are so desperate to play good rugby for our fans, I think it gets the better of us for the first 20 minutes,' Bailey said.

'Once we settled, our defence was superb and the way our backs played was really good. The hands for our last try were exceptional - it was something straight off the training ground.'