IT would be extremely difficult, to overstate the task facing Jersey RFC this Saturday as they bid to get back to winning ways in the RFU Championship.

Beaten for the first time in five games away to a revitalised Bristol (there could not have been a worse time to meet the underperforming aristocrats of last season than straight after their humiliation at Nottingham) Jersey now face a side that is, to all intents and purposes, a Premiership outfit.

Newcastle Falcons, even shorn of the lustre of being being world star Jonny Wilkinson’s one and only English club, have big ambitions to be a force in the Premiership before targeting Europe.