THE GAME TAKES PLACE AT ELLGIA FIELDS, GRANTCHESTER ROAD, CAMBRIDGE ON SATURDAY 7th FEBRUARY 2026 – KICK OFF IS AT 2PM
Here’s Craig:
“At London Scottish last week, they played ‘hang in there finals footy’ – they were the better side on the day at that kind of rugby. Unfortunately we’re learning another lesson in how to be mentally and emotionally accurate in games that are ‘must wins’. Not ‘hey if we play really well we’ll win this game’ or ‘let’s throw the ball around and we’ll get four tries’, but another lesson to take forward into Caldy: if we don’t ‘front’, we will get turned over. If we do ‘front’ and we learn these lessons we’ve got another opportunity to tip over a good team.
“Caldy won four games in a row at the start of the year. We had a good day out up there – they started well against us but we scored some good tries and won the last hour of the game. They’ll be full of confidence having beaten Nottingham at the weekend and they good heart and good skill. I envy where they are on their journey a bit – we’ll get there on ours but they’re a bit ahead in that respect. We need to be consistent – we played really well against Doncaster and not so well against London Scottish so we need to change things up a bit. We’ve challenged ourselves in a different way this week.
“We’d like to be on the front foot and showing that inner strength early on this week. We’re looking at our intensity, accuracy and execution – the players need to decide who and what they want to be for the next 11 games. I think this group will respond. And there’s still 55 points left to play for.”
Skipper Ben Adams misses out this week through injury – as does prop Jack Boal, lock Gareth Baxter and wing Eli Caven. Arthur Thomas will start. Hooker Joe Plunkett is in line for his Champ Rugby debut off the bench.Dan Eckersley captains the side.
CAMBRIDGE SQUAD
15 Ben Currie
14 Joe Green
13 Levi Reweti
12 Jasper Sorrell
11 Ethan Thorne
10 Otumaka Mausia
9 Ruaridh Dawson
1 Jake Ellwood
2 Dylan Irvine
3 Bily Walker
4 Rhys Fulford
5 Jake McCay
6 Arthur Thomas
7 Dan Eckersley (C)
8 Edward Timpson
Reinforcements
16 Joe Plunkett 17 Jake Barry 18 Paul Wulf-Masoe 19 Charlie Friend 20 Chris Mills 21 Jimmy Thompson 22 Taitusi Qaniuci 23 Eparama Rokodrava