WATCH: Reynolds speechless after Raiders fight for huge home win
Raiders claimed a top-six scalp on Saturday in a thriller that meant so much more than just the five points gained.
In a fiercely-fought contest that featured some scintillating tries, Guernsey held firm at the death to secure a 29-24 win over Tonbridge Juddians that, for a moment or two, left director of rugby Jordan Reynolds speechless.
When he did manage to regain his composure, he emphasised the importance of the result.
‘The magnitude of that game for us is huge,’ he said.
‘That’s probably more like our complete performance. I know they scored 24 points, but they’re not a bad team – for us to stick at that, finally knocking off one of the top six...
‘The two last performances we put in here were diabolical and we were really upset about that. We wanted to come back and put in a display that was worthy of it.
‘To be honest, when you’re coming out of things like this, you’ve got to face even more adversity. I think that last 10 minutes showed that – we mucked it up. We turned that ball over right at the end there, but then the boys just trusted themselves, went back into “D”, put some shots in and I’m hugely proud of them.
‘It’s hard to put into words, but I think that’s probably one of my favourite wins of my tenure because of the importance of it as well.’
Watch the tries from Raiders’ 29-24 over TJ’s
Hugo Culverhouse scored two of Guernsey’s tries in an immense performance at No 8 while Tom Teasdale and Ciaran McGann also touched down for Raiders before they showed real grit while under a lot of pressure in the last half-an-hour to clinch victory.
‘That’s a massive, massive five points for us. That is huge. If we lost that today, it could have sunk us,’ Reynolds said.
‘We’ve got a tough game to go up into Esher, but we can almost look at it like just a build from here.
‘We can do anything. We can get a win – anything is important to us. You just don’t know.
‘A lot of people thought we weren’t going to beat TJs today, and we did it.
‘One of our philosophies this week is the hard work creates the magic, not the other way around, so it’s the same thing going into next week.
'We put the hard work in, the magic will come.
‘Then we’ve got Wimbledon, which will be probably a defining game in our season, so it’s really important we play well in both weeks.’
Earlier in the day, Guernsey Raiders Ladies lost 43-0 to their TJs counterparts while in Hampshire St Jacques Vikings won their own thriller 33-32 at Tottonians Seconds.
Match report in Monday’s Press
