All three of Huntingdonshire’s rugby union clubs finished 2013 on a high with home wins in their final games of the year.

Huntingdon & District, who earned promotion to the Midlands One East division last season, won their fifth game of the season when they beat Nottinghamshire visitors Paviors 25-17 at The Racecourse.

“It has been a tougher step up than we thought and maybe it came too fast,” said the captain Boug Bentley. “At times we have given teams too much respect and we have lost two or three games we should have won. But we are now beginning to get the results we deserve and that bodes well for the rest of the season. Hopefully, Saturday’s win was the building block that we needed.”

Jordon Crowe was outstanding in the win with Tom Morgan and Tad Chapman scoring the two tries – but the it was the accuracy of Dan Malem’s kicking that won the majority of the points.

St Ives – another side new to their division after winning promotion – beat Daventry 24-12 at The Chicken Shack in Midlands Three East South.

Tries from Dan Burns, Stuart Cornwell and John Paxton were added to by the boot of captain Jim Robinson, who told The Hunts Post: “As newcomers to the league, we knew we had to step up our game if we were going to be competitive and after an average start, our performances then started to improve. Our ambition at the start of the season was to just stay in this league but the level we’ve reached in the last few weeks suggests that a top half spot is well within our grasp.”

Also confident going into the new year is St Neots’ coach Tim Russell, whose team won 67-0 at home to the strugglers of the Midlands Four East South division Bourne. “We are getting closer to the kind of rugby we want to play and our supporters want to see,” he said.