Like a lot of people, the team were impacted by the fog delays which meant an unscheduled overnight stay in England before being transferred on Sunday to Poole to catch a ferry home, all after the disappointment of having their three-match winning streak ended by Westcombe Park.
Guernsey director of rugby Jordan Reynolds felt that while the 25-point margin of defeat was harsh on his side, a solitary bonus point was what their performance merited.
‘At least this time we did not get back on Monday and at least we got a point out of the weekend,’ he said.
‘There were some good parts to our game and I don’t think we were a million miles away, but the way we have been defensively accurate in the previous three games, we just didn’t seem to have that at Westcombe Park.
‘If we had completed our tackles, I think we would have challenged to win that game because we attacked pretty well, we scored four tries including the first within about 30 seconds of the start.’
Anthony Armstrong gave Raiders that flying start and, after the hosts had responded with a couple of converted tries of their own, he touched down again to bring Guernsey to within four points.
The sides continued to exchange scores in the second quarter with Ethan Smith and Matt Armstrong both getting over the line, but the hosts got their fifth converted try on the stroke of half-time to take a 35-22 lead into the interval.
After such a frenetic first half, the scoring was much more subdued after the turnaround with Westcombe Park adding a couple more tries to their tally while Raiders failed to muster a score in the second half and were temporarily down to 14 after Matt Creber was sin-binned midway through.
‘I don’t think the scoreline reflected the separation between the sides and we did start throwing a lot of ball around our in-goal area in the second half. We would not usually do that,’ Reynolds said.
‘There is a lot we are not getting right attack-wise, but in saying that our broken-play attack was really accurate and we start to look a little like we did last season. We definitely left a couple of tries out there, too.
‘Defensively, we were just not accurate enough across the board.
‘Westcombe Park like to kick to attack and a couple of their tries came from their kicking game. I don’t think their player missed a kick all day, and that put us under pressure as well.
‘Park deserved their win for sure, but there will be a different energy from us at home against Havant.’
As for individual performances, Reynolds credited the winger who scored his side’s first two tries.
‘Ant had a good carrying game. He found his hands on the ball a lot, which was pleasing,’ said the head coach.
‘In general, though, I think we have all embraced the fact that we were fairly flat and we probably lacked a bit of energy, that’s across the board.
‘Over the previous couple of weeks we were probably hitting seven out of 10 whereas we were probably five out of 10 for this game.
‘They are small margins, but we want to be seven or seven-and-half out of 10 from now on going into the rest of the season.’
