CAMBRIDGE RUGBY ANNOUNCE THEIR SQUAD FOR THE TRIP TO BRICKFIELDS – CRAIG NEWBY MAKES CHANGES AHEAD OF THE JOURNEY TO FACE PLYMOUTH ALBION IN ROUND FIVE OF NATIONAL LEAGUE ONE KO 3pm Saturday 2nd October 2026
Cambridge – for the first time this season – were outgunned by last Saturday’s opposition at Grantchester Road, losing 33-57 to Leeds Tykes. Craig Newby’s side are 0 and 4 – Plymouth are 4 and 0 going into this weekend’s clash at Brickfields. Albion scored 50 points on the road at London Scottish last weekend.
Here’s Craig:
Last weekend against Leeds wasn’t the way we wanted to perform. Winning and losing is the product of your performance and we put some pretty good effort in during the week and there was no real indication of that happening ahead of kick off. Obviously, availabilities and injuries play a part, but we can’t predict the amount of mistakes we made and the pressure we put ourselves under. I think we missed nearly 30% of our tackles. We coughed up three tries on our own ball. The ball bounced and they ran in. Just take those two stats alone. You can’t win a game of rugby with that. So there’s always plenty to work on. There’s always something to do. It’s working out the biggest ‘bang for buck’, really, in our week. How do we get the most out of what we do in the time we have?
There have been some big aggregate scores already in National One – and we’ve scored at least five tries in every game. I’m probably normally pretty optimistic around rugby and how we go, but the trend so far is ‘we score one and they score two’. So I’d love to reverse that. I think I said exactly that last week! We can’t just be this team that wants to score tries. We have to be a team that defends and stops tries and creates pressure. That doesn’t mean just kicking the leather off the ball, either – it means making good decisions. I don’t want to be ‘that team’ and we go to Plymouth this week with that in mind. We want to be positive, but we’re on a knife edge in terms of that balance of what identity we want to play like, and be, and what’s going to keep us competitive and harder to beat.
Teams are scoring more tries, there have already been more tries in this first four rounds this year than there was in, I think, seven rounds last year – so teams are scoring more tries and it’s across the board. Whether you’re watching Prem Rugby, Championship Rugby, there’re tries galore but I don’t want to be that coach that just says let’s score plenty and let’s concede plenty and hopefully win by a point because that’s just a weak mindset. We’ve got a lot of work to do around how we can connect and make sure that we aren’t leaking tries for fun, and, at the same time maintaining the things we’re doing well, because amongst all the chaos. and the facts and the stats, we’re doing some really good stuff which we are proud of.
The key to that is to be getting a 20 out on the field that can execute for 80 minutes. We’re in a position where we want to bring our Academy boys through. We’re growing that Academy into something that we can rely on for depth. Jude White is the first Colts player we’ve had come through the Club and play first team rugby since Gareth Baxter. Ted Warner’s played every game, I think, bar one. Oscar Lewis is floating in and around the squad. We’ve got some young guys coming through – Benji Ritson has played in every game this year and is performing well. At the end of day the number one goal for us is to win games of rugby but there’s number two three four five and six, too – and it goes longer and deeper than that on a club level, so there’s some stuff we can be proud of. Ultimately, though, those goals that we’re trying to tick off outside of winning have to relate to winning, and it’s going to have to start pretty soon.
This weekend we have 11 senior players unavailable through injury and family commitments. We’ve got a travelling squad of 22 that’ll go down. It’s a little bit disappointing and frustrating but that’s where we’re at. It does limit us a lot. So to put things in context, it’s not at all an excuse, but there’s some context around it.
Cambridge Squad
- Oscar Lewis 14. Kieran O’Meara 13. Jasper Sorrell 12.Will Wood 11. Eli Caven 10. Luke Bouchier 9. Ruaridh Dawson
- Callum Smyth 2. Harry Tunningley 3. Billy Walker 4. Alex Mead 5. Nile Dacres 6. Tom Campbell 7. Jesse Cotterill 8. Ben Adams (C)
Reinforcements
- Jude White 17. Sam Turner 18. Josh Carr 19. Benji Ritson 20. Ted Warner