Newmarket 57 - 0 Ipswich

With the benefit of some pre-match tips from Dave Sayer, Newmarket's 1st team coach, the U14s proved unstoppable against an Ipswich side that was short of competitive playing time in a disrupted season. The home side dominated in every phase of the game and ran in nine unanswered tries.

The writing was on the wall for the visitors from the first kick off when Ethan Brown and Gwilym Davies combined well to recover the ball. From the subsequent lineout Chris Le gathered loose ball and shrugged off the tacklers to run in from 20 metres out. Joe Stafford converted the first of his five successful conversions.

With Ipswich's scrum proving solid, the visitors tried to run the ball through their backs at every opportunity, but Newmarket were quickly up in defence to shut them down and force the errors. When they kicked for touch, Newmarket dominated the lineouts and it was stolen ball from a throw in that allowed first Dan Downing and then Lewis Heap to carry play almost to the try line, from where Dan Bristow was unstoppable.

The third try came almost immediately. From the drop out Newmarket smuggled the ball back to Heap. The scrum half found his fly half and Stafford raced three-quarters the length of the pitch to outpace the Ipswich defence and touch down in the corner. With Heap in confident mood he was unlucky that his cross-field kick was not gathered by Ashley Reed, Newmarket's pacy full-back.  A  couple of plays later a solid ruck provided the platform for Brown to test the blind-side and prop Tom Wills benefited from the well-timed pass that allowed him to score his first Newmarket try.

Ipswich put up some resolute defence at the start of the second half and did well to bring down Le and Bristow, Newmarket's rampaging forwards. However, they struggled to clear their lines completely as first Ben Jeacock got close and then Le was held up over the line. From the subsequent scrum the half backs again combined to give Stafford his second try.

By now the whole Newmarket team was playing with confidence and neat passing between Nathan Buckle, Davies and Brown resulted in the ball finding its way to Jack Felton for the first of several curving runs, from which he was unlucky not to score but which won him the man of the match award. Again Newmarket found themselves in front of the Ipswich posts and when a scrum became a penalty, Heap took a quick tap and this time wriggled over to score himself.

With both backs and forwards keeping the ball alive and breaking tackles the home side were soon back near the Ipswich line. The pressure told and a stray Ipswich pass behind the posts was seized on by the alert Jeacock who beat the defence to the ball and touched down.

It took just four touches of the ball for Newmarket to cover the length of the pitch and score their eighth try. Jack Watson collected the drop out, passed the ball to Reed who crossed the half way line before slipping it to Stafford who ran in under the posts and then generously allowed Watson to finish the move he had started.

Despite the scoreline Ipswich deserved a great deal of credit for the way in which they continued to stick to their task and, briefly, they managed to get into Newmarket territory and probe for a way through the home defence. But despite nice passing through the hands, the move again broke down allowing Buckle to kick safely to touch. Newmarket retrieved the ball from the lineout and another Felton run paved the way for Stafford to cap a tremendous performance as he mesmerised the Ipswich defence to score his hat trick. The match ended with Reed slotting the extra points.