The trip to Guernsey is always a massive challenge for visiting sides, made harder still on Saturday by the wet and windy conditions battering the island.

So this National 2 East victory which extended extended Canterbury’s winning run to three games was a tribute to their resilience.

Facing the worst of the conditions in the first period the city side played controlled rugby against bullish opposition with the back row and influential No 8 Tyler Oliver always in the thick of things.

So it was against the run of play when after 20 minutes Canterbury were penalised for offside at the breakdown and from the resulting line out Guernsey second row Lewis Hillier was driven over.

That early momentum seemed to be drifting further away when Cameron Murray was singled out for ten minutes in the sin bin. Instead, those setbacks galvanized Canterbury and on thirty minutes they drew level.

It was the unlikely figure of fly half Frank Reynolds who emerged from the bottom of a driving maul to claim the try. When he converted his own score it was the start of a virtuoso performance from the Number Ten who went on to net two tries, two penalties and four conversions for a personal haul of 24 points.

Reynolds added a penalty goal before half time which gave Canterbury a slender five point advantage but it turned out to be a lead they never surrendered.

With fifteen second half minutes played prop Cam Macmillan drove over for his side’s second try and five minutes later second row Dave Irvine was rewarded for an afternoon’s hard graft by adding another to take the score to 27-5.

The home side were not finished though and spurred on by a noisy crowd found a try as fly half Owen Thomas broke the Canterbury cover to put centre Ciaran McGann over the line.

It was too little, much too late and the final word, fittingly, went to man of the match Reynolds as a confident Canterbury went looking for a bonus point try.

Wingers Alfie Orris and Garry Jones went close after some lovely interplay with Will Waddington before forward pressure saw replacement scrum half Ben Cooper set up Reynolds who dummied and outpaced the cover to score under the posts.

A fitting end to a fine individual performance from Reynolds but more importantly a powerful display from a Canterbury squad who played the difficult conditions with a level of skill and control which augurs well for the testing run of league games to come.

Canterbury: W.Waddingtom, G.Jones, F.Morgan, T.Best, A.Orris, F.Reynolds, T.Williams, C Macmillan, N.Morrris, W.McColl, D.Irvine, S.Kerry, J.Stephens, C.Murray, T.Oliver. Replacements: E.O’Donoghue, E.Lusher, B.Cooper, A.Moss, S.Rogers.

Pictures supplied by Phillipa Hilton.