ELY Tigers kicked off the season in style with a resounding 49-10 win over St Ives on Saturday.

Rugby

Percy Walker Cup

ELY Tigers kicked off the new season in style with a resounding 49-10 win over St Ives in the Percy Walker Cup on Saturday.

Karl Hayler’s new-look Ely side were keen to test their mettle ahead of next week’s league debut and quickly showed they will be a force to be reckoned with this season with a dominant display that yielded no fewer than eight tries.

Skipper Hayler said: “This was the game we have been planning throughout pre-season training and it was good to see the lads put into practice what we have been doing in training.

“The coaching staff has worked tirelessly to ensure we are ready for what will be a very hard season.”

Ely’s intention to make early inroads into Ives territory was apparent from the outset and their endeavour quickly bore fruit as, in the opening five minutes, Dan Coulson ran over the line to score under the posts, the try was then converted by Jamie Russell.

Straight from the restart however, Ely were caught slumbering and the forwards failed to protect the ball as it left the scrum, allowing St Ives to score in the corner to bring the scores back to 7-5.

Ives’ riposte served as a wake-up call to the home side and after some brief re-organising they started to dominate the half.

Tries from Jamie Orpwood, Lee Modem, Karl Hayler & Joel Scott-Paul, with a Jamie Russell conversion, took the score to 29-5 at the break.

Eager to stretch their lead in the second half, Ely again blasted out of the blocks. Ben Forteath had replaced Kieran Kennett at 10 and he was soon in the action as he nestled a 25 metre penalty kick straight between the posts.

Little more than 10 minute into the half and home coach Paul Coulson replaced Dave Kempers at outside centre with debutant Ben Hulme, Lee Modem at flanker with Karim Faisali and Kev Houghton on the wing with newcomer Charlie Coupland.

Ely continued to harry and hassle the St Ives forwards after the reshuffle and some excellent ball fed to the backs allowed Jamie Russell to score another try, which he then converted, to take the score to 39-5.

To their credit, St Ives continued to persevere and in a rare foray into the Ely half they ran home a try to bring the reduce the arrears to 39-10.

Dean Brimfield then replaced Chris Day in the front row for the Tigers with Stacey Mould coming on for Lloyd Palmer at number eight.

Ely then finished off a strong performance with two more tries from Sean Kennett and Jamie Orpwood.

The Ely Standard Player of the match award went to new comer Jamie Orpwood.

Forthcoming fixtures:

Saturday September 4

Ely 1st XV vs St Albans

Ely Development XV vs West Norfolk 2