Bullish Batiste has sights set on winning last three games

But Layton Batiste isn’t one for moping and ahead of a rare weekend off from league action, the front rower remained bullish about Raiders’ chances of winning the London & South-East Premier title and insists it is no time for feeling sorry for yourself.

Big Layts seems to have been around for ages and in Raiders terms has.

No current player has played more league games for Guernsey’s flagship side and he is mightily proud of it, although the timing of the Barnes defeat was sure to rankle. Not too much though.

‘Barnes played well, that’s no doubt. They defended well and we were not creative enough. That’s what killed us. We became one too dimensional,’ was his swift summing up before pointing out that it is Raiders who remain top of the table, a position they would have snapped a hand off for back at the start of the campaign.

‘We’re still in control of our own fate and we’ve got to back down to business.

‘We need to pull together, stick together and win all three.’

The prop has been an integral part of a squad that, bit by bit, has raised standards with every season.

How strange then to suddenly be at the top?

‘It’s a bit of a new thing for us, but it’s not a bad thing though. In fact, it’s all good,’ adds a player keen to get up into National Two.

‘As a player you want to play as high as you can, so yes I want us to go up. If I could play in the Premiership, I’d play in the Premiership.’

It seems it will take little, if any, stimulation at all from head coach Jordan Reynolds to lift the spirits of his regular tight head.

Reynolds has long been a huge admirer of his local boys in the front row and previously called Layton ‘a slow burner’.

Batiste just powers on.

The 6ft 2in. 144kg stonemason with Granite Le Pelley has now been at the club for 18 years, a product of La Mare de Carteret sport.

Twice he has won the Siam Cup – on the bounce 2007 and 2008 – and he is desperate to make it three, hopefully that third winners’ medal arriving this May.

Ahead of that, though, is the little matter of two home games against Westcombe Park and Towcestrians, sandwiching the big one, an away game against third-placed Tring, who they edged out 19-13 at Footes Lane in December.

After that nail-biter Giles Wallis, the Tring coach, said his side would still win the league but had praise for Reynolds’s men. ‘Guernsey are very strong up front – a big heavy pack and if they get into the 22 that’s what happens,’ he said, meaning scores.

Even then, Wallis said there would be many more twists in the promotion story yet and the Barnes result nine days ago was one of them.