Cambridge begin the second half of the 2025-26 Champ Rugby season by hosting Doncaster Knights. The game takes place at Ellgia Fields, Grantcheser Road, Cambridge on Saturday 24th January 2026 and kicks off at 2pm.
Coming off the back of the mid-season break, Head Coach Craig Newby had this to say:
“With regard to the time off, I think physically we’re in a good place – a few niggles – but physically the boys are still strong and training well so I think like anything we needed to reassess and have some time and look at what’s most important to move forward and what are we’ve been doing well. We’ve reviewed pretty hard and pretty ruthlessly – we’ve drawn some confidence from our successes in the first half of the season. Mentally, it’s hard every week coming in on Monday and keeping it fresh and energetic and keeping it focused. I think everyone needed that break – me, and the coaches and the staff as well as the players – it’s so nice to just get away from it and then come back in with a clear plan and clear focus, so that’s the biggest thing. Mentally we know if we’d had a run, a few wins maybe, we wouldn’t want the break. If you’re winning you don’t want half-time, you don’t want it to come but I think it’s a good point for us to move forward.
“We’re a little bit adrift at the bottom of the table. We’ve got to try and close that gap. We can only rely on ourselves for that. The other teams, like London Scottish and Richmond and the next group above them, you know they want to take it out of our hands and just keep winning and picking up points and I’m sure they will do that, so we can only control our games and we’re desperate for that win, whenever that comes -hopefully it’s soon. I think it’ll boost confidence if we can get over the line with the ‘W’. I’m sure teams aren’t taking us lightly.
“This week provides another challenge as we welcome Doncaster. We’ll start with our preview and take the learnings from our game at Castle Park. It wasn’t necessarily around how good they are – it’s about some of the opportunities we gifted them and some of our technical decision making so we’ll learn from that. They’ll be previewing us, too, and working hard – it hasn’t quite clicked for them either this year for whatever reason so it’ll be an interesting afternoon. If we stay in the fight long enough they’ll start doubting themselves and forcing things. It’ll be an interesting psychological battle – and we’re battle hardened through adversity so we’ve got that on our side this weekend.”
Billy Walker returns to the front row – Jack Doorey-Palmer starts at hooker. Gareth Baxter misses out this week through injury and Ruaridh Dawson returns at scrum half. Eli Caven starts – Charlie Robson will make his second Cambridge appearance off the bench. Ben Currie has earned his recall at full back.
Cambridge line-up
15 Ben Currie
14 Taitusi Qaniuci
13 Levi Reweti
12 Eparama Rokodrava
11 Eli Caven
10 Otumaka Mausia
9 Ruaridh Dawson
1 Jake Ellwood
2 Jack Doorey-Palmer
3 Billy Walker
4 Rhys Fulford
5 Jake McCay
6 Ben Adams (C)
7 Dan Eckersley
8 Ed Timpson
Reinforcements
16 Dylan Irvine
17 Jack Boal
18 Paul Wulf-Masoe
19 Jack Lawrence
20 Arthur Thomas
21 Jimmy Thompson
22 Jasper Sorrell
23 Charlie Robson