Raiders on the up after back-to-back wins

Guernsey director of rugby Jordan Reynolds praised his players for the way they stuck to the game-plan and got their rewards by scoring seven tries in a 37-19 victory that made it back-to-back wins in National Two East, which has seen them climb to 11th, having been bottom of the pile after three rounds.

‘It was tough – obviously the wind was pretty horrendous and their pitch is quite exposed, so it made things pretty complicated for both sides, but our guys did a good job in adapting quickly to the conditions,’ Reynolds said.

‘We could not shift a lot of ball out wide and as a group we have been talking about tweaking a few things in our game going into the wet winter months, going through a bit more of a power game, so we went straight to that on Saturday.

‘On the day we said, “let’s keep it a bit tighter and go more route one”. It was not perfect, but it was good to see such fast adaption from the guys. They got stuck in and put in a good shift.’

Raiders had the strong wind at their backs in the first half and, unsurprisingly, enjoyed territorial dominance which they turned into points as tries from Martinas Dromanatas, Liam Welch and Matt Creber, plus a conversion from Charlie Simmonds, gave the visitors a 17-0 lead at the interval, though the head coach admitted he wanted more.

‘In the first half we wanted the wind behind us, but they actually won the toss and chose to go into the wind, which we thought was a bit of a strange decision.

‘We were a little bit upset that we did not get another couple of tries in the first half. We thought it was probably a four-try wind, we had probably five opportunities to score and only got three.

‘At half-time we talked about what we wanted to do into the wind and how to control the tempo of the game, but things did not go to plan because they came out and scored two quick tries at the start of the half.

‘Fortunately we got one back quickly and we were in control for pretty much the rest of the game.’

Max Brown and Harry Burn both touched down for Quins in the opening eight minutes of the second half as they briefly narrowed the gap to seven points.

However, Raiders responded well and after Charlie Wilkinson had scored the fourth try for the bonus point, Jamie Dunn, Michael Cantle and Matt Armstrong also got in on the act before Drew Johnson added a late consolation for the hosts.

‘To give an indication of how strong the wind was, there was one time in the second half they held us up over their line, so it was a goal-line drop out. Their guy kicked it and it went dead in our in-goal at the other end of the pitch,’ said Reynolds.

‘In the first half the furthest they got up the pitch was about the halfway line, so the challenge for us in the second half was how we were going to claw our way out of our own half. But we had decided to go to our power game early and we went straight up the middle.

‘We missed 12 points [in coversions], but to be fair, I wouldn’t have wanted to be kicking in those conditions. The ball was not staying on the tee and one conversion attempt in the second half was only about 15m from the posts and it still came up 3m short.’

While Reynolds gave Creber, Wilkinson and Dromantas a name-check for their strong performances, he emphasised that teamwork was the key to victory.

‘The thing that stood out most for me was how effective we were defensively. Some of the shots we were putting in from the start were huge and I was really impressed with how the boys applied themselves,’ he said.

‘Quins are a good side and they can score points, as their results have shown, so it was a huge effort from us and good to get the five points.’

Guernsey Raiders Ladies also had a big win on the road over the weekend as they beat Uckfield Women 60-12 on Sunday.

Raiders team

Steventon, Ceillam, Dromantas, Wilkinson, Webb, Creber, Rice, Welch, Rutledge, Simmonds, Smith, Teasdale, M Armstrong, A Armstrong, Roberts.

Replacements: Cantle, Dunn, Bray, Burger, Boyland.