By Corporalcarrot
November 17 2014

Some random thoughts on last Friday's match against London Scottish at the RAG.

Pre-match kicked off just after 5pm in the Sun Inn a few hundred yards from the ground and it was absolutely packed out with Jersey fans. Great to see two real legends of Jersey RFC in the form of Guy Thompson and our very own Gnome of Zurich Andy Clarke. Quality bit of market research by the Sun who had Liberation Ale as a guest beer. I put in request for Liberation Herm Island Gold next season if we stay up.

I met up with Westcombe Ranger whose son usually plays second row for Scottish although thankfully for Jersey he is recovering from an injury and couldn't play on Friday and we made it into the ground about 20 minutes before kickoff.   Given that Scottish have an average crowd of under 1500 I guess a fair number of the 2108 there on Friday were supporting Jersey.  I noted Albert Bartlett had a bunch of Jersey potato farmers over for the game including a neighbour of mine from St Ouen but frankly there were old mates everywhere.

Sickness on the day meant we lost McCrea & Pembo and couldn't play the tight controlled game the coaches probably planned. Bentley is a brilliant attacking fly half but the high tempo style he brings to the game plan brings with it a higher risk of errors and top four teams like Scottish punish errors and they did exactly that on Friday. I would have preferred to start with Robbling at fly half with Bishop filling in at inside centre and looked for a tight controlled match for 60 minutes and then bring Bentley on to weave his magic but I will support whoever we pick.  We have a similar dilemma next Friday at Wuss.

Apart from the errors the lads played well and certainly held their own against a really impressive Scottish pack.  Line outs were excellent as they have been all season and scrums were much better and will improve further when Salad, Williams & Felts return from injury. Martin Garcia-Veiga had in my view his best game to date for Jersey and would have been my Jersey man of the match.

Scottish were well worth the victory and my overall man of the match was Miles Mantella.

I tried unsuccessfully to lure him over to Jersey - he is absolute class.

The RAG is 45 minutes by train from Gatwick and should almost be a derby match for Jersey supporters. Thanks to Ranger and Andrew for keeping old CC in line.

I went down to see old mates at Vallis Way on Saturday and saw a really strange game of Rugby. The final score was Ealing 64 Tynedale 43 and there were in all 17 tries including three for Chesters and two for Tom Brown. I think any defence coach would have pulled his hair out watching it. I will probably go back next Saturday for the Ealing v Fylde match on the way back from Wuss.