THE Cornish All Blacks have been boosted by the signing of New Zealander, Everard Reid until the end of the season.

The 32-year-old forward who normally plays in the second row, plays for Poverty Bay in the Heartland Championship.

Earlier this summer he made his 100th and final appearance for Mac in the Tui Nash Cup before moving to Poverty Bay.

Such have been the strength of his performances that he was selected in the Heartland XV team to tour Fiji, where he just come back from in the last few days.

Reid knows player/coach Ryan Westren from Westren’s days at the Cornish Pirates, and it was he who got the move started.

Westren said: “I was talking to Everard on the off chance about coming over to play some rugby and it’s worked out really well. His partner is from down here as he met her when at the Pirates and she’s obviously delighted to be coming over to England to be with her family for a number of months while Everard can come back and play some rugby which will be a huge boost for us.

“Although he normally plays either as a second row or flanker we’re probably going to use him as a number eight. We needed some more size in our pack and he’ll certainly give us that. He’s 6ft 5 and about 18 stone so he’ll give us a massive presence which we have been lacking.

“He’s played at a lot higher standard than this, and we hope that he can be that talisman we need to go and dominate games.

“He won’t be playing on Saturday as he only arrives in the country on Friday but he should be ready for Brixham away next weekend.”

While a new signing always gives the club a boost, there’s a huge game for the All Blacks on Saturday when they take on Bracknell (2.30pm ko) who are just above them in the table.

In recent weeks, Launceston have started to make their Polson Bridge ground a bit of a fortress again and Westren knows that must be the case again.

Westren said: “This Saturday is a massive game for us. While we know it’s not exactly a must-win in the sense that it’s so early in the season, in our eyes it pretty much is.

“Last time out at Bournemouth we didn’t perform very well and we know we can’t afford to do that again on Saturday.

“They like a lot of teams in our league seem to have a big old pack and we need to stop that and then when we get the ball go and attack them.

“Although I don’t know a lot about about them myself, I’ve be talking to Danz (Faamatuainu) who played for them last season and he says there’s been a big changeover of players.

“But they’re down near the wrong end of the table like us so there’s nothing for us to fear and we’ll expect to win on Saturday and continue to climb away from the bottom of the table.”