A five try blitz in the opening 22 minutes ended the Cambridgeshire derby as a contest and saw the Roosters playing with renewed confidence after suffering two consecutive defeats.
The visitors made a disastrous start by failing to field the kick off and conceding a goal line drop out. James Shearman caught the kick for the Roosters, passed to David Sykes who drove for 15 metres before offloading to Andrew Dean 10 metres out who went in for a simple score.
Five minutes later the Roosters scored again. A left to right passing movement looked to have broken down following a loose pass but Jack Blackley picked up the bouncing ball and evaded weak tackling to score in the corner. Blackley added the conversion to make the score 10-0. The Eagles put the kick off out on the full and from the ensuing penalty the Roosters were on the march again. Two straightforward drives gained easy metres and then Dean released Sykes who showed good strength to break through the Eagles defence to score. A further try for Dean came on 20 minutes as he exploited a huge hole to dive over from a play the ball near the line. Then in the first set following the restart, Oli Jones broke the line to go 60 metres to score. With Blackley adding another sucessful kick the score ticked on to 26 nil and there seemed no way back for the Cambridge.
To their credit, however, the Eagles started to settle down at this point and managed to stem the tide for a while. They defended better and started to get some field position of their own. However, the Roosters tacklers, having beed largely redundant up to this point relished the challenge and put in some ferocious hits to repel the Cambridge attacks.
Having withstood this period of pressure the Roosters struck again late in the half as first Blackley and then Michael Drake exploited weakness on the left of the Cambridge defence to take the half time score to 36 nil.
In the second half Cambridge took initial comfort from now having the wind and the slope in their favour. A missed tackle in midfield (probably the only defensive blemish for the Roosters in the entire game) allowed loose forward Neil Phillips to go 50 metres for Cambridge's solitary try of the game. The conversion further reduced the deficit to 36-6.
Any come back was soon snuffed out as the Roosters forwards combined to add a further converted try and then David Sykes returned from an extended rest on the side lines to increase his personal tally to two.
St Ives continued to dominate possession and territory and the home fans were delighted to see veteran stand off Dan McCormack cross for a hard earned score after receiving the ball for a second drive having already made the initial break. The Roosters then wrapped up proceedings in the most fitting manner with Charles Paxton contributing a 70 metre solo effort. The final conversion rounded off the score at 60 points to 6.
Next Saturday July 5 at 2.30pm the Roosters are at home to the Northampton Casuals. All are welcome and admission to St Ives RFC at Somersham Road is free.