The match takes place at Dillingham Park and kicks off at 3pm
Here’s Craig:
“Ahead of the final Champ Rugby weekend, we’re raring to go again and set ourselves up for the summer and pre-season. There’s a lot to look forward to and some exciting changes and times ahead over the next few months! We’ve been going through some off-field and on-field review stuff within our departments this week ahead of the end of the season so that we can get that done and we can learn some lessons – and there’re three real key areas that we probably haven’t quite got right that we can learn from in and around recruitment, in and around our processes. So, you know, we’re going try and use those learnings but, yeah, where’s the season gone? 25 games done. It’s been a long season, but it just goes so quickly. So we’re in ‘reflecting mode’ off the field, but on the field, we’ve still got to go away to Ampthill. Hopefully it’ll be a nice day weather-wise – and we can play some entertaining football between the two teams. They’re not in the hunt for the top six but they’re in really good form. I would actually love it if rugby was the winner on Saturday and it was a really high scoring game and we pipped them.
“Some of my highlights this season have been rebuilding an infrastructure off the field, having resources and processes at the Club here that befit the Championship. I’ve been really proud of things like our medical support and our strength and conditioning support, the gym we’ve got here, the GPS programme, so those kind of resources and infrastructure have been something I’m really proud of. We’ve celebrated three academy players this year playing their first games in the Championship, so that’s nice to have those three products of our system coming through. That’s been something really proud of – and getting guys like Jake Elwood to 100 games, Ben Adams to 150 and Gareth Baxter to 200. Those are proud moments. We’ve got lots of guys who have played their first game for the club. We’ve grown our relationship with Leicester Tigers and Northampton Saints, so we’ve had a lot of good men coming from there and they’ll be on their journey to where we’ll be celebrating, in time, when they’re playing for their Premiership clubs or for England or Wales or whoever it is, so that’s something to be proud of too.
“Within the playing group, we obviously had a big turnover last year, and for the most part we got that right. We’ve got some really good characters and we’ve got guys that are staying on beyond that who are now going to be part of our club and the community for another year. So that’s nice. We’ve also had guys who are going on to bigger and better things. Without saying names, we’ve got nine guys staying in the Champ – it’s disappointing to lose those guys and part of my role and part of the club’s role is to provide a platform for guys and players and girls now to come to the club and develop and move on in their careers. I haven’t spoken about games at all, but I’ve been proud of some resilience that the group’s grown.We talk about character and things that will last the rest of their lives and our lives and this will shape us so we’re going to, in a modern world where things come easy and we’ve had it hard, we’ve had it really hard so we’ve had a really good upbringing and that’ll put us as a group of people in really good stead for future lives, not just in rugby.
“So that’s something we can be proud of, we’ve never thrown in the towel. We have a saying here, ‘Don’t ring the bell’; so we haven’t rung the bell, we’re still going through everything we want to go through in a week to get to the performance on Saturday. Have we been disappointed with some? Yeah, we have. Particularly the last two weeks where we’ve fallen off the pace a bit. Other teams are picking up the pace, we’ve fallen off a bit. But we’re still proud of the effort and the group that we’ve got together. No one’s moaning, we’ve never had any crisis talks, we’ve had positive engagement with each other so there’re plenty of positives in a win-less season to date, which is a crazy statistic. I’m extremely proud to be part of this club”.
Skipper Ben Adams misses out through injury – Dan Eckersley will captain the side and Royal Navy back row Chris Mills returns at number eight. Gareth Baxter will make his final appearance in Cambridge colours before retiring. This weekend has come to ealry for Billy Walker and Eli Caven – Paul Wulf-Masoe continues in the front row and Leicester Tigers England age group wing Kesena Izu is also back in the fold. Billy Pasco keeps his place after a try-scoring debut last week against Hartpury.
Cambridge squad
15 Ben Currie
14 Kesena Izu
13 Billy Pasco
12 Jasper Sorrell
11 Ethan Thorne
10 Otumaka Mausia
9 Ruaridh Dawson
1 Jake Ellwood
2 Jack Doorey-Palmer
3 Paul Wulf-Masoe
4 Jake McCay
5 Gareth Baxter
6 Rhys Fulford
7 Dan Eckersley (C)
8 Chris Mills
Reinforcements
16 Joe Plunkett 17 Tabuna Maka 18 Ben Shamley 19 Charlie Friend 20 Arthur Thomas 21 Eparama Rokodrava 22 Jimmy Thompson 23 Joe Green
CRAIG NEWBY HAS NAMED HIS SQUAD FOR THE FINAL CHAMP RUGBY GAME OF THE 2025/26 SEASON AT AMPTHILL
