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Guernsey Raiders enter a demanding run of fixtures well on track to achieve the top six finish they were targeting at the start of the year.
Havant are the visitors on Saturday, but so far this season Footes Lane has proven to be a fortress where Raiders remain unbeaten.
Guernsey ended the year with two narrow losses on the road after being forced to sit out a month after weather-related cancellations.
"We were out just by small margins," said Raiders Heads Coach Jordan Reynolds.
"And that comes down to the fact of not playing a lot. The good thing is now everyone's on a level playing field, everyone's had their three weeks off. We think that gives us an advantage again.
"We've got a tough game against Havant, they've had a lot of close games against a lot of big sides, and they seem to be just missing that last four or five minutes in the game. So we know it's going to be a pretty tough battle for us, and they've got nothing to lose. They've been throwing the kitchen sink at every team this season, so that's a tough encounter for us, but we also are looking to right the wrongs of those last two games as well. So there's a lot of motivation there."
— Guernsey Raiders (@guernseyraiders) January 10, 2025
Guernsey FC cancelled their home match on Wednesday because of the wet conditions and the Footes Lane turf is likely to be a factor on the weekend.
Havant are coming over more used to playing on 3G.
"I think initially it's going to be a little bit of a tighter game, where the physicality comes in, and that's where we probably want to get the game to. We want it to be physical early doors so we can stamp our authority on the game.
"There'll be a lot of kicking that will come from that. We've made some slight adjustments on how we're attacking at the moment as well.
"When you win eight games straight, you don't think you have to change anything, but if you don't, you don't get ahead of the curve, people find out about you pretty quickly, and they get on top of you. So hopefully the adjustments we've made on attack at the moment will make a big difference for us and if not, it's just something for us to think about differently. You know, the season gets long and boring sometimes, so just creating new things for us to work on will make a big difference."
Raiders came into this latest National 2 East campaign targeting a top six spot.
They are currently fifth, but with two games in hand on those around them, against second-placed Dorking and second from bottom Colchester - bonus point wins in those would on paper put them level on points with Barnes in third.
"For us, nothing's really changed. We are pretty process driven, so we're not really looking at the end target.
"We did talk about it on Tuesday, though. To make our goal at the end of the season, we're now faced with even more challenges that no one else has to face in the league.
"We have now 11 games straight that we have to play without a break, but if we've learned anything this season, the breaks haven't served us too well.
"So we've looked at that and said, if you think about those eight games that we played, we played excellent rugby all the way through that, we had a week off, and then we played poorly against Henley. So for us, it's looking at these 11 games, if we can get through these 11 games and still be in the top six and we face that challenge, then that'll galvanize the squad a lot closer together."
Injury has already hit the small Raiders squad hard with some big name players being taken out of the equation entirely early in the season. The likes of Tom Teasdale, Dom Rice and Charlie Currie have been big boots to fill.
"You can make excuses about it all day, you know, but if we're turning around saying, 'Oh, well, we lost the game because so and so had to play instead of this person', then we're worrying about things in the past and we're not worrying about where we're going.
"Our philosophy and our thought process is let's be thankful for who we have coming in and the guys have done a pretty good job for us this season coming in.
"When we won a lot of those games, early doors, those eight games we were making those changes anyway. A lot of those injuries happened at the beginning of the season. For us, we've just got to be thinking forward, how do we get through this game against Havant, how do we get the four or five points this weekend and keep building from there?"
Kick off is at 14:00.
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