Armstrong confident Guernsey can climb the table

ANTHONY Armstrong is calling for more consistency from his Guernsey team after their Jekyll and Hyde first half of the season in National 2 East.

Armstrong, 28, scored a hat-trick last weekend in Guernsey’s 41-13 victory over Westcliff and the winger was delighted to have contributed to an important bonus point victory away from home.

He said: “It was really good to get that win on the road. We’ve struggled with our consistency, so to get five points on the board was good. We made pretty hard work of the first half but came out and put the game to bed in the second half which was pleasing.”

Armstrong brought his tally up to 10 for the season and is benefiting from Guernsey’s attacking style of play but says there’s more to come from him and the team.

“I’ve been going alright, it’d be nice to get a few more. We’re a pretty dangerous backline in general and Ethan Smith has scored quite a few tries as well, so it’s about being more consistent with what we do as we have lots of quality in our backline and we should be doing better than what we currently are.”

Guernsey came into this weekend ninth having won seven of their opening 17 games and Armstrong is hoping they can climb up the table.

He said: “I think we play some good attacking rugby that’s attractive when we’re on it. Consistency is what’s let us down; we’ll play 40 minutes of world beating rugby and then we’ll make a couple of mistakes and we’ve found at this level that if you make mistakes then you’ll get punished for it almost every time. We’ve missed that last pass in terms of attack and haven’t quite converted our chances.

“We’re in a nice position where there’s a bit of a gap to 10th and if we can get a few good results over the coming weeks we can start to get closer to where we want to be but with Blackheath, Worthing and Dorking to come it won’t be an easy challenge but it’s one we’re looking forward to.”