Nottingham travel to Jersey this weekend as tenth host eleventh in the RFU Championship table with Neil Fowkes side still looking to gain their first win of the season.
A spirited performance last weekend against high flying Cornish Pirates ended in 22-33 defeat at the Bay with the Nottingham Head Coach stating he was “happy with the second half performance” after giving away a couple of cheap first half tries leading to a 3-26 half time score which as Fowkes said “gave us too much to do”.
Fowkes relayed “in the second half we stopped everything they threw at us” with the addition of a few of their own tries and Nottingham will need to do that for eighty minutes in Jersey as they make the journey to the channel islands to take on a side two points above them in the table and wounded themselves from a thumping 64-17 loss at Ealing Trailfinders last weekend.
Nottingham will be without Jac Price who returns to his parent club Scarlets but the side have plenty of optimism in search of their first win of the season, Jordan Coghlan last weekend was brilliant with a 19th Green & White try whilst winger Joe Browning was in the Championship team of the week and Jake Farnworth shown glimpses of his speed with a stunning try.
Ahead of the match, Fowkes who leaves his duty as Coach at the end of the season said “It’s going to be tough were travelling on the day so were on a flight at 10am in the morning straight in to Jersey then straight back in the evening.”
“They are going to have 1,000 fans in there and we’re the first team to travel because they’ve played all of their games away due to the Covid restrictions. They’re going to have a massive boost with the fans there – It’s a tough place to go anyway.”
“They’re a big money team, they’ve got good finances over there and they can bring in a lot of players from all over the world. They’re going to be a tough team to beat.”
“We’re going there to build on our performances and build our way back from the situation we’ve been in. Hopefully we can go over there and perform to the levels we know we can do, and cause them a fright.”
Nottingham have advertised their vacancy for the Head Coach position on their website with applications to steve.smith@nottinghamrugby.co.uk.
Kick off in Jersey is 3pm with details on how to watch the match on the Nottingham Rugby website.
*Main image @NottinghamRugby the team fought back against the Pirates last weekend in defeat.
