Lacklustre Raiders need a rest after BSE defeat

A patched-up Guernsey side picked up a bonus point for scoring four tries in a high-scoring game, but director of rugby Jordan Reynolds was reluctant to use the absentees as an excuse for the final 45-28 result.

‘The frustrating thing from our point of view was just the way we missed too many tackles – it was probably our worst tackle completion percentage of the season so far,’ he said.

‘There were three areas in which we were not very good. Firstly, our line-out didn’t function at all, secondly our tackling and thirdly our discipline was awful.

‘The rest of our game was pretty good. We scored four tries and probably could have had a couple more, but we were never going to beat a side like Burys if we’re not making our tackles. We allowed them to score a lot of tries.’

Raiders got off to a bright start with Hugo Culverhouse powering over the line from close range to opening the scoring with Callum Roberts adding the conversion, as he did for all of the Guernsey tries.

However, three tries in the space of nine minutes swung the game in BSE’s favour.

Ben Cooper got their first to level the scores before Tom Brown and Samir Kharbouch touched down.

James Burger reduced the deficit with Raiders’ second try on 32min., but Charlie Reed kicked a penalty for the hosts to give them a 24-14 half-time lead.

Reed went over himself early in the second half and Craig Stevenson also touched down before Sam Boyland scored on the hour for Raiders.

Harry Hall came up with BSE’s sixth and final try before Anthony Armstrong went over late on to earn Raiders their bonus point.

However, the result means they missed out on the chance to climb above their hosts in the table so remain ninth, eight points behind those sides immediately above them and nine ahead of Canterbury in 10th.

‘It just looked a bit lacklustre. I understand we made a lot of changes, but I would say 50% of the guys gave maximum efforts, the other 50% gave less than was required,’ said Reynolds, who felt Boyland and Matt Creber were two of his side’s better players on the day.

‘The areas we struggled in – completing tackles, discipline and line-outs – there’s no excuses for those, no matter how many changes you have made.

‘Where you think it might be an issue would be your flow in attack, but we still managed to score four tries. If you go away to any team and score four tries, you should win the game and if we could have fixed two of those three areas, we would have won.

‘It’s disappointing, but at least we know what we have to work on.’

He added that he would save the hard work for next week, though.

‘It will be good to get some rest.

‘I thought we actually looked mentally fatigued after the TJs game going to Westcliff.

‘Having Saturday off and spending some time away from each other – or maybe me away from them – will hopefully rejuvenate some energy.’