Last season’s National Two East runners-up Dorking were always going to provide Guernsey with a stern test in their first Footes Lane game of the new campaign, but rather than rise to the occasion, the green-and-whites were well off the pace as they suffered a 39-22 defeat without as much as a bonus point to show for it.
‘Poor from us. There were elements in that game that were poor last week [too], and I think today we were just second best in everything. So that’s pretty much the assessment,’ said Guernsey director of rugby Jordan Reynolds.
‘We set up a pretty good game plan and I’ve just said to the boys our execution was just unbelievably poor. And then I said to them, “you can’t just show fight when the game’s gone and think it’s acceptable”. It’s not good enough from us.’
Despite playing with the wind at their backs in the first half, Raiders trailed 22-3 at the break and Reynolds admitted that he thought his side’s chances had already gone by that point.
‘Defensively we were poor, attack-wise we had no shape – we couldn’t make gainline,’ he added.
‘What we said [at half-time] was we’ve just got to try and claw it back, two or three tries and see how we are.
‘But like I said, it just wasn’t good enough. I thought there would have been a lot more fight out of us early doors. And I think, to be honest, we just seemed happy to be second best to a lot of things today.’
On a bad day for local sides, St Jacques Vikings suffered a 71-14 defeat away to Bognor in Counties One Hampshire.
Read a full Raiders match report in Monday’s Press
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