It has been a rollercoaster of a year in terms of results for Guernsey, but they have been fighting against injuries for large parts of it and in assessing where his side stand at the halfway point of the National Two East season, director of rugby Jordan Reynolds was quick to commend his players for their efforts in the face of what he believes is more than their fair share of adversity.
‘It’s a really difficult one because if you did not know the team and were looking in from the outside purely at our results, you would say we are a low mid-table team,’ said the Raiders head coach, whose side are ninth in the table with six wins, a draw and six defeats to their name.
‘But I don’t think you see what we have had to contend with this season because already two massive injury crises have gone through the squad and when we have not had all those injuries, we went on a run when we were winning a lot of games.
‘I think where we are is not a fair reflection on the quality of our squad and the effort the boys have put in.
‘In fact, in 2025 as a whole I would say we have just had a lot of bad luck. At the end of last season we were having injury problems and even going into the Siam we were missing a significant amount of players.
‘It has been a tough one, but hopefully we can turn things around in the new year when we will be looking at getting guys back on the park and looking after them. At the moment we have 13 guys out from a squad of around 26-27, so that makes things really tough and we are coming up against really good sides at full strength.
‘I think the guys need a break because we have a lot of people on the sidelines through no fault of their own and guys playing week-in, week-out who are mentally and physically exhausted.’
There is still one big obstacle ahead of Raiders this year, though, as they head to fourth-placed Dorking tomorrow to start the second and concluding round of fixtures.
Dorking were 39-22 winners back in September at Footes Lane when Raiders were going through their first injury-hit spell of the campaign.
From the side who performed well for no reward against Barnes a week ago, Guernsey are set to be without Sam Steventon, Tom Teasdale, Brad Webb and Lewis Hillier.
‘It is another very tough challenge for us,’ Reynolds said.
‘Having to go away to face one of the best sides in the league is always tough on any day, but there were encouraging signs from us last week against a very good Barnes outfit – I don’t know a team who make so few errors in the second half as Barnes did.
‘But the most pleasing thing was that the boys gave a huge amount of effort and we were a little unlucky not to get anything from the game. Hopefully we can take some of the confidence we gained from the performance into the Dorking game.’
