JERSEY coach Dai Burton is worried that, if his team continues to win games like this, they will be promoted.

The RFU are trying to expand the leagues above us and it could be, if we finish third, that we’ll win promotion.

But I’m not sure we want that yet.’ He was speaking after another explosive game of rugby, this time away from home, which saw his team come from nine points down to win, convincingly, 38-17.

Despite three first-half penalties which gave Maidstone an early advantage, Jersey continually rocked Maidstone with the force of their tackles which resulted in three of their players having to leave the field through injury.

The first to go was their 6 ft 4 in winger, brought down by Ryan Morgan and captain Steve O’Brien but, in his wake a centre and a forward also departed, following big hits by a Jersey side which Burton said is: ‘almost reaching its potential’.

‘From the start Maidstone were feeling the force of our tackles,’ explained Burton.

‘Even when we gave away penalties, they weren’t interested in kicking for position, we’d been hitting them so hard.

We didn’t allow them to put any kind of attack together while we kept making all of the breaks, After the first half hour you could tell we were the better side, simply by the body language.

Even though we were losing, we were cruising the game.

We just had to move up that extra stride.’ They did so on the stroke of half-time, when stand-off Sam Cummins was fed the ball following a catch and drive to dart over.

Then, in the second half, Jersey’s aggressive style of play took over.

Within minutes of the restart following a Dave Miles’ break and another catch and drive flanker Latu scored to give Jersey a lead they never looked like losing.

Even when Nathan Kemp, their influential No 8 had to leave the field with a hamstring injury, Jersey simply upped the pace and applied the pressure.

So, Ian Henderson’s score, when he peeled away from yet another driving maul, for a converted try, was no more than Jersey deserved as the pack continued to bully the game.

James Brimelow was next to score, following a maul and a clever underhand pass by Latu and, despite conceding another three points from a penalty, which made the score 24-12 with three quarters of the game played, full-back Gareth Jeffreys then made space for himself and stepped inside to make it 31-12 following the conversion.

To their credit, Maidstone went on to score a try from a rolling maul but Jersey had the final say when Steve O’Brien dummied, and stepped inside for an easily converted try, the final score.

‘We’ve been like a sleeping giant all season,’ said Burton.

‘But now we’ve woken up.

The second half saw us play probably our best rugby this year.’ Jersey: Marcus Nobes, Josh Chamier, James Brimelow, Ian Henderson, Roger Quirk, John Allo, Nathan Kemp, Latu Maka’afi, Dave Miles, Sam Cummins, Ryan Morgan, Steve O’Brien, Ross Allan, Steve Mee, Gareth Jeffreys.

Replacements: Marc Peters, Gareth Davies, James Simpson, Paul Nayar, Mark Le Mottée.