Guernsey fall flat in Sevenoaks loss

Keen to establish themselves in the top four of National Two East at Christmas, having not played for a month due to two weather-induced postponements, Guernsey fell flat and suffered just their third defeat of the season on Saturday as Sevenoaks earned a deserved 24-16 victory.

Raiders were hit by the late withdrawal of influential back-rower Josh Poullet due to illness on Friday, which caused a late reshuffle, but head coach Jordan Reynolds did not look for any excuses.

‘We were not great – to be fair, it was far from anything we have represented this season,’ said Reynolds, who also missed the game, having been sick overnight.

‘We lacked aggression, we weren’t accurate and we made some silly decisions in the wet and muddy conditions.

‘It is more disappointing than frustrating. You can be frustrated if a few calls go against you or a couple of times the ball doesn’t go to hand, but we had some many different controllables that we had in our own hands and we just did not deliver.

‘It was across the park, too. It was not just one area,’ he added, having reviewed the footage.

Raiders had taken an early three-point lead thanks to Ciaran McGann’s penalty, but the hosts scored the first try of the game through Ethan Jones just three minutes later with Ben Adams adding the conversion.

Adams slotted over a couple of penalties in the first half, too, while Guernsey responded with a catch-and-drive try for hooker Phil Le Noury and a second penalty for McGann to trail 13-11 at the interval.

Thanks to the boot of Adams, Sevenoaks extended their advantage to eight-point going into the last 10 minutes before Guernsey got back to within three thanks to a try for Ethan Smith.

However, Sevenoaks had the final word when Scott Sedgwick sealed the victory with a try in the 76th minute.

‘For the first time this season, our forward pack was dominated in certain areas while our backline was exceptionally flat,’ Reynolds said.

‘You can imagine it is disruptive to lose Josh the night before, but we have tried to build on team on being adaptable and we were just not on it. In rugby you can lose players all the time to injury early in the game and you just have to get on with it. We had a day for it to register that Josh was unavailable, so I am not allowing us to use it as an excuse.

‘Yes we had not played for three weeks, so you can expect to be rusty and you might take a little while to settle, but you should not be flat for 80 minutes – you find yourself platform and you launch from there.’

On a positive note, Reynolds was impressed by the display of Jack Colbourne, who was shifted from the wing into flanker when Poullet was ruled out and did an admirable job in the circumstances.

Raiders will be looking to put that game behind them quickly and end the year on a high when they head to Westcombe Park on Saturday for their final game of 2024.

‘There was stuff in our performance [at Sevenoaks] that was pretty common in our games last season which we will need to rectify, so hopefully we can address it this week and get it right for Westcombe Park,’ Reynolds said.

‘We are going to face similar conditions, so it becomes a physical battle and, generally, that is something we have been exceptional at this season.’