On a day when it was nigh-on impossible to name a player of the match for the hosts, with impressive displays across the pitch in the 36-26 victory over Havant, Jordan Reynolds was full of praise for the nous shown by Charlie Simmonds in pulling the strings for his side.
‘I thought Simmo’s game management was absolutely excellent for a guy that’s been up against it for the last six weeks because it’s very difficult to be at 10 for this team,’ said the Guernsey director of rugby.
‘There were times where I was saying to Jonesy [coach Luke Jones], “now this is the time we’ve got to go forward” – we’ve gone edge, edge, and then we go forward and he dumps it off to Martinas [Dromantas] or Matt [Creber] and we’d punch through and then we’d go to edge again.
'I thought he did that really well.
‘Even when he did that little kick which just landed in-goal, the IQ to do that was unreal, because they had no one back there. What was the result of that? We ended up getting the ball back, penalty and we’re on top of them.
‘So those little things were amazing. It was probably one of the best game-management matches I’ve seen him do for all the years that he’s been at 10 for us.’
Once the head coach started analysing the performances of others, though, the praise continued.
‘Martinas was unreal for his 50 minutes, his carrying game was unreal.
‘You’ve got Liam Welch, his line breaks were phenomenal, and then that offload to get the last try, it was unbelievable.
‘Then you step out of the pack – Ant Armstrong must have been on 12-13 carries today, all for gains, Tom Teasdale was having amazing game until he got injured.
‘There’s a load of guys in there that played really well, which is so pleasing, and it means all the work and the mental work that we did this week about trying to enjoy ourselves again has come off.’
All in all, it was a highly satisfactory day for Raiders as the bonus-point win took them above both their opponents as well as London Welsh in the National Two East table.
Perhaps the one disappointment was that the result was not as convincing on the scoreboard as it could have been, but Reynolds was upbeat.
‘The positives outweigh the negatives.
'We, the coaches, were saying at half-time that could have been 40 points to 10. We had four held up over the line, and it’s just those little bits of detail we could get better.
'But I generally felt we were the far better side across most areas,’ he said.
‘From where we were a week ago, a bit of soul-searching from Westcombe Park, having some fresh faces come back in this week, I thought it was an excellent performance all around.
‘So, for us, have we stepped forward? Absolutely. And that’s all we need at the moment.’
Raiders have a week off before returning to action away to Bury St Edmunds on Saturday 14 March.
