Craig Newby has made two changes to his starting XV for the visit of London Scottish – the game takes place at Ellgia Fields on Saturday 18th October Kick Off is at 3pm
Here’s Craig –
“We’re really proud of our first half performance up at Doncaster last week – and the second half too where we had to fight and dig in. There was a defensive set in the 70th minute where we defended 14 phases on our own line and got a ‘held up’ turnover. That’s as important for me as coring tries or controlling the first half. We’ve set some clear performance goals – we know what we’re aiming for an we can measure improvements. The challenge for us is to not to drop off on the things we’re learning. We’re stacking that learning, which is pretty cool. We dominated the first 35 minutes against one the best teams in the Champ. We need to turn that 35 minutes into 50 minutes, 70 minutes and that’s a challenge for us to embrace.
“We need to establish a balance between creating pportunities and taking opportunities – that’s another challenge for us. I’m not looking at wins and losses at the moment – at some point, I’ll have to – but we can only control our efforts, and our application and accountability to ourselves.If we get enough of that right in the week leading up to the game and enough of that right on a Saturday we are talented enough and tough enough and we’ve got enough quality throughout the team to perform and win. The pressures for us are always going to be external – everyone wants to do well and it’s extremely competitive for the jersey at the moment. Everyone’s training well and players are asking me why they’re not playing as a result. It’ll be another tough battle this weekend – London Scottish and ourselves are both chasing that – so far – elusive first win – and we have to put ourselves in the best position to achieve that.
“Joe Green starts on the wing ahead of Eli Caven who moves to the bench. Vereimi Qorowale also gets a Champ start. Jack Doorey-Palmer, on a season -long loan from Harlequins, has earned a call-up to face the club he played for on loan last term. And scrum half Jimmy Thompson is back from a summer playing for Warratahs in Australia. He’s also amongst the reinforcements, with Pete White unavailable on Saturday”.
Cambridge Line Up:
15 Otumaka Mausia
14 Joe Green
13 Henry Lumley
12 Eparama Rokodrava
11 Vereimi Qorowale
10 Jamie Annand
9 Ruaridh Dawson
1 Jake Ellwood
2 Jack Doorey-Palmer
3 Billy Walker
4 Gareth Baxter
5 Jake McCay
6 Rhys Fulford
7 Dan Eckersley
8 Ben Adams (C)
Reinforcements:
16 Harry Bellamy, 17 Zac Nearchou, 18 Jack Boal, 19 Jack Lawrence, 20 Arthur Thomas, 21 Jimmy Thompson, 22 Eli Caven, 23 Ardal Yallop