Ivybridge will be looking to get back to winning ways this weekend when they travel to near Bristol to take on Dings Crusaders tomorrow.

With last weekend being a rest weekend due to the Rugby World Cup final, Ivybridge haven’t played since their heavy defeat at home to Cleve, a match which saw them missing 11 players due to injury and absence.

As such, senior manager Neil Thomson has no qualms about the 21-52 loss derailing the season and is pleased to have a virtually full squad to choose from.

Looking ahead to what is likely to be a hard-fought match against the Crusa­ders, despite them sitting 12th in the table, Thomson said: ‘They’ve won two out of three up there, so we know it’s going to be a tough game, but we’re looking forward to it and looking to bounce back.

‘They’re probably looking at our last result and thinking what the hell happened, but we knew we were going to be struggling for that game with our lack of availability.

‘We’re back to pretty much full strength, Lewis Paterson is back from injury as is Reece Adams, so it’ll probably be him, Matt Finn and Jay Geraty to start in the front row, with Johnny Morgan ready to bring on, he’s a bit of a beast to have coming off the bench.

‘We’re happy with the team, we’re looking at maybe starting Damon Ackerman on the wing, but we’ll see, the lads are really looking forward to it and keen to get a win. We had a great party last weekend for the world cup final, we’ll hopefully carry that camaraderie into the weekend. We still sit fourth but we’re keen to get back into the top three.’

A win on the road is a difficult thing to do in this league, but Ivybridge will be able to take confidence from their success against the All Whites earlier in the season. With a full squad the Bridge certainly have a great chance to get back to winning ways and consign the previous game to a footnote in an otherwise successful season.

It is a testament to the team that mixing it with the best in the league is where they feel they belong, given that this is their debut season in the national leagues.