The ex Harlequins, Newcastle and Leicester fullback, who won 72 caps for his country, was named as Esher’s new sporting director at the start of the year and last week he took over the first team’s coaching reins on an interim basis following the departure of Chris Wilkins.
Guernsey’s director of rugby, whose side head to Surrey this weekend aiming to make it back-to-back victories having returned to winning ways against Oxford Harlequins a week ago, joked that he will ‘have to keep an eye’ on his assistant Luke Jones on the sideline with Brown being known as a fiery character from his playing days.
However, Reynolds was also quick to acknowledge the impact someone of Brown’s profile could have on a club.
‘He has only been there a month and any coach will take half-a-season to a season to establish anything new in terms of style, but there will be some ideas he will be implementing and the team will have a bit of a boost when you have that sort of change at the top,’ he said.
‘Mike Brown was a very intelligent rugby player so he will have Esher primed and there will have been a natural uplift with him coming in, so no doubt they will be pretty strong on Saturday.’
Esher are yet to win in 2026, but last week they came within three points of winning away at London Welsh, and they sit one position and three points below 10th-placed Raiders in the table having won half-a-dozen games before Christmas.
Guernsey have a couple of personnel changes to the side who beat Oxford 26-3 last weekend with Reynolds opting to not risk Callum Roberts as he is carrying a ‘slight niggle’, so Tom Teasdale will start at fullback.
‘Because we have got strength in depth at the moment, especially in the backline, we feel it might just be better to give a guy who is around 80% a bit more time to recover and select someone who is at 100%,’ said the head coach.
In the forwards, Sam Steventon is away for the next three weeks so Jamie Dunn takes his place on the bench while Nick Selway is also among the replacements as Raiders manage Tom Ceillam’s workload.
Reynolds added Josh Poullet should now be able to get through the full game having played 40 minutes on his return from injury last week when Guernsey were delighted to pick up a bonus-point victory in dreadful conditions.
‘From speaking to people in the stand after the game, I don’t think people realised quite how cold, wet and windy it was down there on the pitch – it was really tough,’ said Reynolds.
‘I said to the players afterwards that you only had to take one of those elements out and I think we would have gone on to blast that game out of the park, but we had them all at once which made it so difficult.
‘The important thing was we did enough and we got the four tries, so now this becomes the biggest challenge because we have got to go to Esher and win. On the road we have not won many games, but we have to stop making excuses.’
Guernsey Raiders team
Dromantas, Cantle, Currie, Culverhouse, Webb, Creber, Rice, Poullet, Boyland, Simmonds, Smith, Dawe, McGann, A Armstrong, Teasdale.
Replacements: Selway, Dunn, Welch, M Armstrong, Rutledge.
