Cambridge head coach Richie Williams makes changes ahead of Championship round 8 at Ealing.
Here’s Richie:
“It’s going to be a big ask on Saturday. Ealing won the league last season and they’re currently second behind Coventry. They’re set to make that step up to the Premiership one day. The quality that they’ve got, the depth in their squad, the experience at this level – it’s going to be a really tough game. “It’s almost a ‘free shot’ – we’re going there with nothing to lose. We want to put a game plan together to cause them some problems and challenge them a bit and there’s been a huge focus on ‘us’ this week and hopefully we can put our game together better than we did last week.
“Last week was disappointing – in the first half we put together some of our game we’d spoken about in the week. In the second half we conceded some really cheap points early on and the game got away from us. There were far too many costly individual errors and it was only the last ten minutes where we looked to get ourselves back in the game we played with any real intent. We want to fire a few more shots from our attack than we did last weekend.
“We know their quality but we have to be brave and give it a go. The minimum on Saturday has to be a try bonus point – other sides have got that no matter what the score on the board – Doncaster have shown the blueprint in that respect. Bedford were unlucky on Saturday.
“There are some chinks in Ealing’s armour – we’ve just got to be really good and clinical when we’re in possession and that’s been the big focus – trying to bring fluidity to our attack for longer periods of the game”.
Jake Ellwood and Joe Green are out. Ben Adams, Jack Bartlett and Jimmy Thompson miss out this week. Northampton Saints loans Will Glister, Ollie Scola and Archie Benson all keep their places in the squad.
Cambridge Line Up:
15-Eli Caven 14-Josh Skelcey 13-Sam Hanks 12-Matt Hema 11- Will Glister 10-Louis Grimoldby (CC) 9-Ruaridh Dawson 1- Zac Nearchou 2- Ben Brownlie 3- Billy Walker 4- George Bretag-Norris (CC) 5- Gareth Baxter 6- Kayde Sylvester 7- Jared Cardew 8- Matt Dawson 16-Morgan Veness 17- Oliver Scola 18- Jake Bridges 19- Archie Benson 20- Iestyn Rees 21- Matt Williams 22- Pete White 23- Joe Tarrant