I drew back the curtains sunday morning and saw the blue skies, sunshine and the lack of rain, I thought to myself today is gonna be a good day!

And I was certainly right!

With only a few absentees, we had a strong squad, following a really productive training session on Thursday the boys seemed to really have the fire to put behind them the 2 prior match results.

We turned up to Newmarket and saw something that had been elusive for the last few months, a dry, grass covered pitch and.....training area! No ankle deep, squelchy shoe removing mud around the pitch, the day was gonna be a belter!! The sun was beaming down and I even braved to run the training session in my short sleeves.. I love spring!!

Things started to take a turn during the warm up, their coaches explained they have only 13 maybe 14 players, they would have to go uncontested in the scrums also. This may explain why we always play this team at Newmarket, I feel they would have less than 10 players for an away match. It wasn't so long ago that we were down to 13 players, now look at us!!

We agreed to play without flankers, they then lost a back in the warm up! We wanted to play, so agreed to 12 a side, the lads that had to sub were amazing and took the news maturely! Credit to them.

From the off we were dominant, last week we couldn't catch a cold, this week nearly everything went to hands, the boys supported each other all around the pitch and defended really well, I am going to be honest it was hard to keep up with the order of scoring but I will summarise the best I can.

Callum smashed his way through for a hattrick
Josh was all over the park and made some great supporting runs to score 2 tries
Owen jinked his way through for 2 tries
Will unleashed the pace and scored 2 tries
Daniel boshed his way though for 1
Jonah dug out his inner Marcus Smith and jinked his way through for 1 and set up Arlan (who was in a perfect position) with a beautiful pop pass.
This crowned off by 5 conversions from Dolly and 1 from Finn.

Allround this was the most complete performance from the lads, everyone who came off the bench slipped into the pattern of play immediately and seamlessly.

Man of the Match nominated by Newmarket was Axel! He is developing into a complete player, he chops them down in a tackle but now is starting to run at defences, we look forward to seeing him develop over the rest of the season.

There was not one player in our squad that didn't have justification to be voted man of the match, this is not flattery but honest truth! Onwards and upwards!

Notable mentions must be for Owen and Will, they kindly played for Newmarket due to 2 injuries within the opposition team, however I think the Ives lads relished the opportunity to play against them! It shows maturity and sportsmanship to do this, all qualities we love in Rugby

Up the IVES!

The coaching team!