The cruel loss away at Tring leaves us nine points adrift of our conquerors, but Reynolds said his side dominated every area of the match and it was a good performance.

‘There are good things starting to come through.

‘Perhaps our eyes are too much on the scoreboard and not on task on hand,’ he lamented.

‘We dominated every area except the scoreboard.’

Like the rest of us the coach does not like what he sees when he glimpses at the National Three table, but he is not overly-worried and can see good things developing.

‘We’ve got 15 games to go - it’s such a long season - we’re starting to play some good rugby and get some players back.’

The good news is that there were no big injuries picked up in the match at Tring and the squad should be stronger this weekend.

‘’We took a couple of knocks but everybody is fine.

‘We could have Ned [Brown] and Sayer back this weekend.’

The 1sts led 22-21 in the dying moments only to concede late on and go down again, this time 26-22.

The Guernsey scrum and lineout worked well all afternoon and two of their tries came from catch-and-drive moves.

A Layton Batiste try converted by Sam Whitehead put us 7-3 ahead, but by half-time Tring had got their own score to lead 8-7.

Tring extended that lead to 18-7 early in the second, but a superb Glen Walters try converted by Whitehead who also knocked over a penalty, gave us a 17-16 lead.

Tring scored another try to lead 21-17, but when Robin Le Cocq scored we were a point ahead.

Sadly, we could not hold on and that late score broke our hearts.

The coach said to go so close and, in his view, win the match, showed how well the side played.

‘But simply playing good at this level is not good enough,’ he insists.

‘We have got to put away games like this or we will be in trouble,’ he added

[i]Other results:[/i]
Barnes 25, Amersham & Chiltern 13
Chichester 23, Bury St Edmunds 20
East Grinstead 28, Westcliff 12
Gravesend 17, Hertford 27
Tonbridge Juddian 23, CS Rugby 1863 20
Westcombe Park 20, London Irish Wild Geese 29