The visitors, who play in Super Rygbi Cymru, which is the elite domestic competition in Wales, may have run out winners at Footes Lane, but the gap between the sides was a lot closer than the scoreline suggests and Guernsey director of rugby Jordan Reynolds was very upbeat about his side’s performance.
‘From where we were the week before against a very good Rennes side, it was great to see such a positive reaction from the players,’ he said.
‘This month we have played two sides who are maybe a league or two higher than us and they were always going to be challenging fixtures, but on Saturday I think the performance was not reflected in the eventual scoreline.
‘We camped in their half or their 22 for big parts of both the first and second half, and we talked about setting the benchmark defensively for this league season we have coming and there were encouraging signs there for sure.
‘Newport were just a little bit quicker at certain things – for example they caught us out twice with quick taps that led to 14 points – but we had a lot of opportunities that we could not convert. We know there are things we need to work on, but on our side of things we have got new players and we have got young players so it’s about looking at different combinations and things like that.
‘We are still looking at how we want to play. It is exciting, but it will take some time.’
Newport provided Raiders with a much different examination than Rennes had done a week earlier, with the Welsh outfit’s style more akin to what Guernsey will face in National Two East, albeit of a better standard.
The way the home side faced up to that impressed their head coach, with Ciaran McGann, Charlie Simmonds and Anthony Armstrong all touching down for the hosts while Gwyn Parks added a couple of conversions.
‘The commitment and effort levels were really good and we managed to get our players more minutes, which is really important. Our effort across the park was a massive improvement on the previous week and defensively we were so much better,’ Reynolds said.
‘Obviously we were up against different styles – Rennes were very fast and a great off-loading side, Newport were very physical up front, but they also had a whole host of very good players. They are one of the best teams in Wales, and for us to be competing with them was fantastic.
‘I think if you do not know who Newport are, people might look at the result and just say, “oh Raiders didn’t win”, but they often play Championship sides in pre-season. If you look at Swansea, they finished below Newport and have just beaten Plymouth Albion who were in the National One play-offs last season, so that shows the level we played at on Saturday.
‘We fronted up really well. Newport scored within the first three or four minutes and our heads could have gone down, but straight from the restart we had a big kick chase and scored.
‘The whole playing group stood up well. We are still disappointed that the scoreline crept up late in the game when we made some changes, but I think a fair reflection would have been 26-32 or something like that.
‘It was really encouraging to see how we competed against higher opposition.’
There was also another new face on show as new hooker Joe Callery made his first appearance off the bench and did enough for his coach to say he looks like he will be a ‘good asset’ for Guernsey.
In reflecting on both pre-season matches, Reynolds emphasised that they have provided Raiders with a much clearer indication of what areas they need to work on to start pushing up the National Two East table having finished 10th last season.
He added that the main goal within the playing group was to build consistency while raising the bar.
‘The whole aim of these fixtures was we did not want to beat a team by 70 points from the league below because we do not get anything out of that. We would rather challenge ourselves than take the easy route.
‘From our perspective, what we faced this weekend is not what we are going to be facing in the league, but we want to think bigger.
‘One element we took from when we played Rennes was we need to get fitter for our transitional periods because in this game at the elite level there are no rest breaks – you cannot switch off.
‘We also have some improvements to make around our defensive flow and raising our physicality and the next couple of weeks for our group is probably going to be the hardest part of pre-season so far, but hopefully this format is going to work for us going into the league season.’
Reynolds also revealed that there may be other long-term benefits to how his side played on Saturday.
‘We have already had a couple of messages from other Welsh clubs reaching out about the possibility of coming here in future,’ he said.
‘I don’t think Newport thought the game was going to be as hard as it was and from speaking to them, they were really complimentary about our club.’
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