Cambridge 4's vs. St Ives 2's
On a hot sweltering day St Ives traveled to Cambridge for the last game of the 06/07 season, looking for revenge due to the 69-7 thrashing by Cambridge last November. Due to unavailability of several regular second team players, some players were asked to play out of position ending up with Dan Seymore and Teddy Backhouse making their deputes at second row and Captain Oliver Scott taking on the responsible role of scrum half.
St Ives started strongly with the 'Ives' pack dominating by looking after the ball in the tight with some fantastic support play and quick offloads coming from flanker James Yeomans and N0. 8 Andy Dolby. This gave Fly Half Mark Dollard the opportunity to give awesome ball to the centre pairing of Paul Ashbridge and Alex Campbell, there aggressiveness in the tackle and Ashbridges excellent attacking ability were key to St Ives controlling the first half. After a Backhouse drive into the Cambridges 22 the ball found Ashbridge who beat 2 players to open the scoring for the visitors. Ashbridge also added the two points from the kick to make the score 7-0 to the 'Ives'. Unfortunately St Ives fell asleep 5mins before half time ending up with Cambridge scoring a converted try to make the half time score 7-7.
Cambridge started the second half stronger than the first and quickly scored two tries and a conversion which shell shocked St Ives. This gave St Ives the motivation to restart the engines and a piece of brilliance by Dollard put Ashbridge in for a 40 metre run brushing off 4 would be tacklers to score the try which put St Ives back into the game and made the score 19-12. The pace of the game then slowed down with either side able to take full control of the game unfortunately with 9mins to go Tommy 'Trevor Leota' Newmen was sin-binned for lashing out at the Cambridge blind side flanker.
St Ives did fight until the final whistle but were unable to defend against Cambridge's overlap with there winger scoring a try to make the final score 24-12 to the home side. After the game Captain Oliver Scott said "To come to Cambridge and get result like today with over 8 regular players missing, I am very pleased. Its a shame that the season has finished today, i believe that this season has been a successful one and it has been an honour to Captain this team. This season has been the building block, if this group of players stick together i believe next season will be a successful and wining season, Happy Holidays".
Try Scorer Paul Ashbridge (2)