After collecting five welcome points and moving up a place to fifth in the National Three London and SE table with the win over Amersham, Raiders director of coach says the challenge is to stay in the top six at Christmas.

Raiders ran in five tries against the league's bottom side courtesy of Dale Martin (two), Malcolm Barnes, Jason Batiste and Dan Hill, while Kenny Hellier kicked all five conversions in a fairly comfortable win.

While the league's top four have opened up a significant gap, Raiders now lead the middle group who are all pretty congested. Jordan Reynolds knows full well it will not be easy to stay there, particularly with a couple of very testing games coming up in December, including Wimbledon away this coming Saturday.

The head coach was, in the main, pleased with the performance against Amersham, playing some good rugby, most notably in the first half, 'There were some defensive lapses and I thought we panicked a bit, but generally we performed really well,’ said the coach. 'There is just about 20-30 per cent of our game where we lost a bit and were not so comfortable.'

Amersham might be bottom but Jordan expected they would be no pushovers and that proved to be just the case, although Raiders hit them hard from the off in a game shortened by 10 minutes. 'For 20 or 30 minutes in the first half we were excellent,' said Jordan.

Once again, the pack were excellent, but in the backs Luke Jones produced a man of the match performance, Jason Batiste fitted in very well alongside him and Kenny Hellier had a strong game at full-back where the head coach would prefer to play him longer term, he says. 'I thought he did really well and he gave us good direction.'

In the meantime, Hellier is likely to turn to the centres for the away game at Wimbledon when the club will be without the unavailable Ned Brown, Luke Sayer and Cameron Craine. Brown is another week away from fitness, while the news on Matt Thomas is pretty good. The big No. 8 looked in potentially serious trouble when he was stretchered off to hospital on Saturday, but he is not as bad as first feared. 'He has pulled some muscles but it is not the slip disc we first thought and hopefully he will recover in a few weeks.'

In the meantime, Raiders could have long-term injury victim Sam Whitehead back for this Saturday, having been given the all-clear to return to action at the weekend. 'He has been training with us regularly and hopefully his knee is now OK,' said the coach.

Raiders will also welcome back Dave Davison from injury and it should be a strong squad that will take to the pitch against high-flying Wimbledon, one of the clubs chasing leaders Tonbridge Juddian.

Guernsey Raiders Team:
Steventon, Ceillam, L. Batiste, Hillier, Merrien, Martin, Mercadal, M. Thomas, Barnes, Davies, J. Batiste, Jones, Taylor, Sayer, Hellier
Replacements:
Hill, Craine, Nixon

Amersham & Chiltern:
Harland, Stock, Wright, Grammenos, Machado, Hasting, Harrison, Berridge, Fluker, Williams, Hughes, Blewitt, Toms, Portland, Jack
Replacements:
Cole, Stevenson-Leigh, John