‘We’re being dragged into relegation battle’

That was the view of Jordan Reynolds on Saturday when his side’s performance was as grim as the weather as Canterbury deservedly won 34-10 at Footes Lane to make it four defeats in a row for Guernsey.

‘We didn’t look comfortable at all today, just looked a little bit panicky around what we’re doing and that’s probably a little bit of their pressure and a little bit of our pressure on ourselves just snowballing,’ said the Raiders coach.

‘I think that probably puts us in a relegation battle now and maybe that will be the tide that turns us.

‘It’ll be a really big week next week up at North Walsham. We didn’t beat them up there last season. So we’ve probably got a lot to look forward to. But it’s going to be tough.’

Raiders had taken the lead against Canterbury through a Lewis Hillier try, but by half-time they trailed by five points and never looked like getting back in the contest after the interval, with Ciaran McGann’s late score merely a consolation.

‘Even when we played the best sides here, like Blackheath, there was a 50-50 battle, and I don’t think it was today, and that probably says a lot about where we are,’ Reynolds said.

‘It’s not everyone, you know, you’ve got guys like Dom Rice out there killing guys [in the tackle] for fun, but we’re just not getting it across the park.

‘At half-time we said with the wind we could kick it away, but it hadn’t worked for us, so we decided to run it. The issue was, as I said to the backs [after the game], we didn’t complete a back-line move until the last 15 minutes of the game, so we probably overplayed.

‘It would have been good if we just carried one a little bit further in and just kept building phases, but ultimately we had to change our plan pretty quickly.

‘I don’t think that was the defining factor. I think probably that first half really killed us and after that it was just a slow death.’

• Match report in Monday's Guernsey Press.