Although back-to-back defeats to the top two in the division to start the new year is not disconcerting in itself, Guernsey director of rugby Jordan Reynolds emphasised that his side must improve on their performance at Oundle on Saturday if they want to start climbing the table in upcoming fixtures against sides below them in the table.
‘We have got a really important couple of weeks coming up for our season,’ he said, ahead of the visit of bottom-of-the-table Oxford Harlequins to Footes Lane then a road trip to Esher.
‘Everyone was a little bit flat on Saturday, which was disappointing.
‘We know we can raise our game and we are going to have to.’
Reynolds believed that Raiders had the chance of pulling off an upset on Saturday away to the second-placed team, but they contrived to shoot themselves in the foot at vital moments.
‘We were probably in it with about 20 minutes to go, but we let ourselves down with a lot of mistakes, a few silly penalties, and Oundle managed to get away from us,’ he said after the 35-17 loss.
‘But performance-wise it just wasn’t good enough from us and we have got to try and quickly turn it around.’
On a wet and muddy pitch, Oundle scored two converted tries inside the opening quarter-of-an-hour to established a 14-point lead, but Raiders hit back with a Liam Welch try on 23min. that was converted by Tom Teasdale, who then kicked a penalty to reduce the arrears to four points.
However, approaching half-time Ciaran McGann was sin-binned and either side of the interval, while Raiders were down to 14, Oundle scored two more seven-pointers.
After returning to the pitch, McGann touched down and Teasdale added the extras to make it 28-17 going into the last quarter, but it was the hosts who came up with the final try of the game with 10 minutes remaining.
‘It was almost a carbon copy to what happened against Old Albanians,’ Reynolds said.
‘We got a yellow card shortly before half-time, they scored a try right on half-time and then another straight after, so the gap was big to try to close up.
‘But at 28-17 we missed an opportunity that would have brought us to within a score.
‘Generally, we were in it, but the week before against OAs we lost those big points and that’s exactly what happened again, so we’ve probably only got ourselves to blame.’
However, Reynolds also added a word of praise for the victors.
‘Oundle were good for the win, no doubt about it. They put us under a lot of pressure and you can see why they are sitting second in the league, and will push OAs till the end of the season,’ he said.
‘Even then, we had dominance in some areas. At scrum time we were all over them, we just could not turn that into points.
‘One of the biggest differences on the day was that their kicking game was better than ours. If we kicked, we had a really weak chase line whereas their chase had a lot of energy.’
Raiders team
Wrafter, Ceillam, Currie, Webb, Culverhouse, Welch, Rice, Creber, Rutledge, Teasdale, Smith, Dawe, McGann, A Armstrong, Roberts.
Replacements: Cantle, Dromantas, Steventon, Simmonds, Boyland.
