Raiders knew they were going to be in for an extreme test in their first pre-season outing as they came up against a full-time professional outfit from the ‘Nationale’ – the third tier of French rugby – but what they came up against was something never seen before at Footes Lane.
The visitors were simply scintillating.
The pace, guile, ambition and subtlety with which they played was something special to behold, leaving the Garenne Stand faithful bewildered and the Guernsey players often grasping at shadows.
That is not to say that the home side did not have their moments and, remarkably, they had more possession than Rennes during the first half, but the fact they trailed 42-5 at the interval demonstrated just how destructive the opposition were once they got ball in hand.
The elusiveness of their runners and their desire to keep the ball alive through deft offloads to support players, who were always in attendance, brought them a couple of tries within the first 10 minutes despite being largely in defensive mode in those opening exchanges.
Raiders deservedly got on the scoreboard after 17min. when young debutant hooker Ferdi Barnett peeled off from a catch-and-drive maul to touch down in the left-hand corner, but that merely prompted Rennes to move up a gear and they scored four more converted tries in the second quarter of the game.
Immediately after the break Raiders endured a torrid 12-minute spell when they could barely get their hands on either the ball or an opponent and it resulted in another five tries.
It was as if the Rennes coach had, for some reason, read his players the riot act at half-time and they responded accordingly.
To their credit, Raiders kept battling and they got some reward when Dale Rutledge exploited a small gap in the defensive line after his forwards had taken the ball up to the line through a series of carries that allowed the scrum-half to dummy one way then go the other to score.
The hosts had a few more decent moments in the final quarter with players making an impact off the bench, but Rennes always had the capability to turn defence into attack in the blink of an eye and they eventually took their try tally up to seven for the half and 13 in total.
Guernsey director of rugby Jordan Reynolds had emphasised beforehand that the scoreline was going to be irrelevant and afterwards he acknowledged that everyone had witnessed the epitome of French flair, but he added that it was a very useful exercise from his perspective.
‘I thought there were loads of positives from our side.
‘Obviously we’re up against a really good opposition – that team would beat most Championship sides – but we knew that and last year we played Sheffield and won an easy pre-season game and thought we were great, and then we really struggled.
‘What we wanted to do this year is really try and challenge ourselves against quality opposition.
'There’s one thing that we can’t contend with them is just the speed that they could run at and the power they have. If we could keep our guys in the gym all week long, we’d probably do that as well. But I think there’s just those learnings for us is we talk defensively as like just not dying on possession. They would get one offload and the inside defenders just stopped. At National Two we probably don’t have to do that as much.
‘We’ve got Newport coming next week who are going to be pretty similar to these guys, maybe more National One, and they’re a really good side.
'So it’s just taking those learnings into next week and saying if we can get 10% better defensively, regardless of the scoreline in these games, then we’re going to be such an improved side for National Two.
'So I think today we’ve got huge benefits out of that.’
The Raiders head coach also reported that he was pleased with the impact of the new faces, both in terms of the signings he has brought in as well as the local academy products stepping up to first-team level.
Iwan Shenton and Joel Broadhurst put in big shifts in the second row, while new fly-half Gwyn Parks showed why he should be a big asset in National Two and Jacob Gent got plenty of minutes after Callum Roberts suffered an early knock.
‘It’s very difficult for anyone to play out there against such quality opposition, but you’ve just got to see the little detail like I love the fact that when they’d scored, Shenton was running back to halfway trying to bring everyone with him. Things like that will really boost us this year,’ Reynolds said.
‘You’ve got to remember, we’re not competing against these guys in the league and we’re not competing against Newport in the league next year.
'It’s about us, what we get out of these sessions, and I think the new boys made a big contribution today.
‘All these juniors coming in, two years ago we wouldn’t even have thought putting them in a National Two game, and we’ve now put a load of these guys out and we’re really impressed with a lot of them against really good opposition.
‘So if we can do that against teams like this and then now leading into a National Two season, the burden doesn’t sit so high.
‘You’ve got to also remember, what do we have, seven starting forwards out today? That’s a huge amount of players to be missing from our pack.
'So the fact that we had a great maul try and we did build some great phases in there – and I thought some of our scrummaging was really good today – there’s huge bonuses coming out against a full professional side.’
