IN Island youth rugby’s biggest match since last season’s Hampshire U18 Cup final victory over Gosport and Fareham, Jersey U19s host the much vaunted Exeter Chiefs in the last 16 of the National Under-19 Plate tomorrow afternoon.

Having knocked out last year’s winning club, Bury St Edmunds, in the last round Jersey will again be in bullish mood, particularly with reinforcements from last season’s County Cup winning team having returned to the Island to lend their shoulder to the effort.

But they will, nonetheless, start as second favourites against the Chiefs, and it will take a real Mother’s Day bloom to earn an away quarter-final tie against yet another side with a massive reputation, Newbury Blues.

Chiefs are a club packed with achievers, with a dozen Devon county cap winners, a South East divisional flanker in James Harris and Adam Garner the scrum-half for England Colleges, all travelling.

Although Chiefs’ large squad lose four players to Devon U20s’ County Championship tie away to Gloucester, they still travel in strength, having cancelled today’s Devon Colts Merit Match against Barnstable. They are certainly well positioned to win that league having scored a massive 427 points and conceded just 35, and are currently in second spot with games in hand

Returning to the Island from university to help Jersey are lock Alex Whitehead, hooker Spencer Adams, flanker/centre Charlie Clyde-Smith, and three-quarter Dan Lezala.