The scoreline did not flatter the visitors on Saturday against an out-of-sorts Guernsey who, for once, were not at the races on home soil and, barring the first quarter which was fairly even, did not look like getting anything out of the game.

The home crowd knew it too – seldom has the Garenne Stand been that quiet for a National Two contest.

Yet it promised much more in the first 20 minutes.

Very quickly from the outset it looked like being a real arm-wrestle, with try-scoring opportunities always going to be at a premium.

A bulldozing run from Canterbury No 8 Tyler Oliver in the sixth minute sparked the first attack of any note, but a knock-on in the wet conditions soon quashed that threat and a couple of minutes later Raiders came close to breaking the deadlock when, after a driving maul, the ball was spun all the way out to Ethan Smith on the left wing but he was tackled into touch by Garry Jones just 5m short of the corner.

The first prolonged period of pressure led to the first try and it was one bright spot on the day for Raiders, which turned out to be a false dawn.

Three penalties were earned in quick succession inside the Canterbury 22 and after the third was kicked to the corner, the subsequent catch-and-drive carried co-captain Lewis Hillier over to score an unconverted try.

In the immediate aftermath of that try, the Guernsey defence was excellent as the visitors struggled to get over the gain-line, but when a brief bit of argy-bargy broke out in the 25th minute, leading to visiting flanker Cameron Murry being sent to the sin-bin for 10 minutes, it seemed to galvanise the visitors and swing the momentum their way, never to return to the hosts.

While down to 14, Canterbury took the lead as their own-catch-and-drive maul rumbled over the line for Nathan Morris to dot down on the half-hour and Frank Reynolds’ conversion put them two points ahead.

He increased the lead to five just before the interval with a straightforward penalty.

At the halfway stage, though, no-one would have suggested Raiders were out of the game, even with Sam Steventon and Callum Roberts out of the action through injury.

In truth, they never got back in it.

Fly-half Reynolds slotted over his second penalty on 45min. to open up an eight-point lead and Guernsey’s day was summed up two minutes later when Sam Boyland burst through to create a two-on-one, but Charlie Simmonds was unable to gather his offload as they sprinted towards the line.

For the next 20 minutes, it was one-way traffic on the scoreboard.

Cameron Macmillan scored Canterbury’s second try with a little snip around the side of the ruck from close range and five minutes later, not long after Hillier had been shown a yellow card for a high tackle, the visiting pack shoved their way over the line once more, this time for David Irvine to score.

Once back up to a full complement, Raiders managed a consolation try when Simmonds and Ciaran McGann went down the short side for the latter to slide over.

But it only seemed right that Canterbury would have the final say and it was their 10 Reynolds who jinked through a couple of tackles before sprinting up the middle of the pitch and under the posts to complete the scoring with four minutes remaining.

Guernsey’s own Reynolds, director of rugby Jordan, felt that his side’s recent issues with not executing properly had raised their ugly head again.

‘In the second half for them, their 10 just sat there and launched it long. It’s all we had to do, but we’re just a little bit flustered at the moment about how we do that,’ he said.

‘It’s probably because we’re constantly talking about it and analysing it and saying, “we’ve got to get this right”, so that’s probably been felt by the players.

‘But as I said to them afterwards, I haven’t seen us like this in a home game. We’ve got to try and mentally work out how we get out of this... I won’t say rut, but I felt today we probably got beaten at everything, and I haven’t seen that before.’