Raiders pay price for some 'dumb footy'
IT WAS not the start Raiders wanted, but it was what they deserved.
Guernsey’s new National Two East campaign got off to a disappointing start on Saturday as Old Albanian won a see-saw encounter 27-25 at Footes Lane.
The home side scored a try with time ‘in the red’ at the death from which Dan Rice had the opportunity to snatch a draw with a successful conversion, but his fine strike from the right-hand touchline just sailed the wrong side of the posts to leave the visitors celebrating.
Raiders coach Jordan Reynolds felt his side got what they deserved.
‘I thought there was some really good stuff that we did and then we just played some dumb footy,’ he said.
‘What I was saying last year is that we were limiting it down to 15-20% of our mistakes we were getting punished for and today we had about 40% and they only just beat us.
‘The execution from both sides today wasn’t great, so we’ve got a lot of work to do, but I think there’s a lot to see in what we did that can put us up into the top half – we’ve just to limit the dumb footy.
‘If you look at the first 15 minutes, we were excellent in the first half, same thing applied in the second half. We did 15 minutes good, as soon as one thing went wrong, it snowballed and then you could see we just started lacking a bit of belief going into the rest of it.’
There was better news for St Jacques Vikings as they began their Counties Three Hampshire campaign with a 78-12 victory away to Fareham Heathens.
• Raiders match report in Monday's Guernsey Press.
