1sts run in five tries in a vital bonus-point win

Jordan Reynolds is not one for piling on false praise, but our head coach was enthusing about this one.

‘An outstanding performance from the lads,’ he said 24 hours later.

‘It was good...there were patches when we were struggling but in general territory we dominated all aspects,’ he said.

‘In the first half we had 80% of possession and territory.

‘We won the collisions and the lads got the reward for it.’

Beforehand Luke Sayer answered an SOS by to give Jordan Reynolds’ side a flying start with two early tries.

Luke had not been due to feature but stepped in on the wing when Jason Batiste was injured in training on Thursday night.

‘Jason tore his calf in training and Luke’s a pretty good replacement,’ said the coach who saw his team fall behind to an early try before hitting back convincingly.

With Glen Walters converting one of Luke’s two first-half scores it was 12-12 at the break.

But then we really turned it on.

Further tries from Dave Davison, Tom Ceillam and Matt Hema, all of them converted, plus another penalty from Walters, ensured we finished well ahead.

‘All the tries were well worked,’ said the coach, who was full of praise for centre Ned Brown, who turned in a man of the match performance.

‘’It has taken him a while to find his feet but he was on fire and this was his best performance for us yet.’

The result means we climb to 10th in the table and out of the relegation zone.

But with Tring edging out CS Rugby 25-18, Tonbridge Juddian pipping Westcliff 32-31 and Amersham & Chiltern losing at home to East Grinstead, we now have four teams below us.

One downside for Guernsey was the loss of flanker Robin Le Cocq at half-time through a hamstring injury.

However, with his side having a weekend off before they host CS Rugby 1863 at Footes Lane on Saturday 21 March, Reynolds hopes that both Le Cocq and Batiste could be back in contention for selection for that game.