The crowd in Saint Peter Port was well into four figures for the inaugural Crown Cup rugby match between Guernsey Raiders and Douglas on Saturday afternoon.

They were treated to 15 tries by two sides intent on making the most of a rare opportunity to face new opposition.

Raiders showed why they are a couple of rungs above Douglas in the RFU ladder thanks mainly to the potency of their backline, who flourished on the firm pitch at Footes Lane.

By no means was it one-way traffic, Douglas can be proud of the tenacity they showed both in defence and attack resulting in three fully deserved tries of their own.

’All in all, there must be close to 2,000 down here today, it’s been fantastic and I think we got a lot of tries and a lot of entertainment,’ said Raiders’ head coach Jordan Reynolds.

’Last year against teams of the same level [as us] we beat some teams by 70 points. I don’t think there’s that huge difference there.

’I thought Douglas rose to it, they scrummaged well in parts, they definitely tackled well, they defended well so fair play to them. They were definitely not stepping backwards to come forwards.’

Douglas coach Carl Murray felt it was a very beneficial trip for his players. ’It was always going to be a tough challenge, but we were expecting that,’ he said,

’It was awesome to play in front of a crowd like this - we don’t have this in the Isle of Man, a grandstand like this, so it was amazing for our young lads.

’It was good for us because we have ambitions to play National League rugby.

’We are still three to five years off that strategic plan, so it’s something to work towards and with the Crown Cup now, we have got that fixture next year and hopefully we can get some more in-between as well.’

On a gloriously sunny afternoon, it was all set up for the Raiders backs to shine and Luke Sayer soon got the ball rolling with the first of his four tries in what was an outstanding performance from the Guernsey fullback.

Matt Armstrong added a second try 10 minutes later to enable the hosts to jump into a 14-0 lead. Further backs’ tries from Tom Teasdale and Joe Andresen were intermingled with brute-force scores from forwards Brad Webb and Layton Batiste, but Douglas got on the board themselves before the turnaround thanks to Simon Hoddinott.

Armstrong completed his hat-trick after the break, bettered by Sayer’s three in the half, while Taylor Quate came off the bench and joined in the fun with a pacey effort of his own.

Douglas wing Will Cain was rewarded for his persistence with a try and the visitors also had the last word as the line came just in time for hooker Carl Markl-Ferns as he was being chased down on the final play of the game.

Raiders coach Reynolds said the biggest difference on the day was the home side’s backline: ’They were on fire,’ he suggested.

Unsure how Covid-19 would affect the national leagues, he added: ’We might have an in-house game here or, if we can, we might pop over to the Isle of Man in a month or two’s time.

’We would be happy to go and play them. They’ve said they had about seven seniors players who haven’t come away, we have another seven or eight guys we didn’t play today, so it would be good to get that rotation and give those guys a run out.

’If we could get two squads to go over there, we could get the same thing as we’ve had here.

’We know it’s going to be an annual thing that we play for, but if we can help them out a bit we would like to do that, but it will depend on flights and other logistics.’

St Jacques Vikings defeated a Douglas Development XV 42-10 in a later game in Saint Peter Port on Saturday.

Report: Gareth Le Prevost, Guernsey Press