Maidenhead target response after battling defeat to league leaders Jersey

Jersey RFC 60, Maidenhead RFC 12

Maidenhead may have been beaten by league leaders Jersey on Saturday afternoon, but the players were far from downbeat in the aftermath of a 60-12 loss to the Channel Islanders.

Head coach David Mobbs-Smith would have half expected his side to lose away to the league leaders -who’d won all their matches coming into Saturday’s clash.

However, he’d have wanted to see them go down fighting with the kind of performance that might suggest they’re capable of living with even the best teams in the Regional 1 South Central Division. And from their post-match scenes in the changing room after the final whistle – that’s exactly what he got.

You can’t win on the scoreboard every time you don a jersey but defeat ⁦@JerseyRedsRugby⁩ can’t tame the warrior within ⁦@maidsrfc⁩ Always good times when you play with your mates ⁦@WillGreenwood⁩ pic.twitter.com/BmAXGqyKGA

— David Mobbs-Smith (@Mobbsy11) October 11, 2025

It’s been a tough start to the campaign for Maids, who are 10th after five matches and starting to get a little cut adrift from the teams above them. On paper their fixtures looked difficult in the opening weeks of the season and that’s proved to be the case, with Maids managing to win just one of them - a stonking 47-15 home win over bottom of the table Hammersmith & Fulham.

They were comfortably swatted aside by CS Stags on the opening day of the season and have also lost more competitive fixtures at Bracknell (26-14) and home to Camberley (22-33), where they’d have hoped to cause their opponents a few more defensive headaches. In the second match against Camberley, the visitors were also reduced to 14 players around the half-hour mark so had to see out more than half of the game with a man disadvantage. Still, they were able to puncture holes in the Maidenhead defence and come away with a bonus point win, while Maids came away from both Bracknell and Camberley with no points to show for their efforts.

In front of a big crowd at Jersey RFC on Saturday, Maids competed well in the first half. They took the lead when Louis Monks touched down after five minutes before the Channel Islanders scored four tries between the 11th and 27th minutes through Jack Macfarlane, Dan Barnes, Mark Boarer and Timothy Grey. But Maids managed to scrap their way back into contention with a converted score from Thomas Marland in the 29th minute.

That’s where the game stopped ebbing and flowing, however, with Jersey asserting their dominance at the end of the first half and throughout the second half.

Morgan Brady and Barnes, with his second, gave the home side a commanding half-time lead, while further scores from Macfarlane, Lewis Wynne, Cameron Keys and Boarer with his second of the game, confirmed another big win for the title favourites.

Despite this though, Maids enjoyed their weekend trip to Jersey and will be happy with how they competed in a more even first half with a team that’s been beset by injury difficulties already this season.

They will now look to bounce back in their remaining fixtures in October, at home to 11th placed - and currently winless - Wimbledon on Saturday (October 18) and away to third placed London Scottish Lions on Saturday, October 25 - one of several teams to have started the campaign better than perhaps expected. Other surprise packages this season are Old Alleynians, who sit second with four victories, Tunbridge Wells in fourth, Farnham in sixth and Worthing in seventh.

It’s already shaping up to be a difficult campaign for the likes of Wimbledon, Maidenhead and Bracknell, who sit 11th, 10th and ninth in the table - teams who’ve generally competed well at this level over the past few seasons and finished well away from the bottom two or three.