CRAIG NEWBY HAS SELECTED HIS SQUAD FOR CHAMP RUGBY ROUND 25 AGAINST HARTPURY
The game takes place at Ellgia Fields, Grantchester Road, Cambridge on Saturday 2nd May 2026 and kicks off at 3pm
Here’s Craig:
“I think it’ll take me longer than a week to get over the Coventry game to be fair. I know the players are still hurting from that – we’ve addressed a lot of home truths and it was pretty painful, but we’ve got to get over it and and this week’s a fresh start. So we will be looking forward. We’ve got Hartpury at home They’re a very good side. To be honest I don’t know the permutations in the top six but I’m assuming they’re pushing hard for it so they’re going to come in full guns blazing. We’re going to look at ourselves this next two weeks and what we can control and how hard we can play and our preparation has to be spot on otherwise we get what happened at Coventry. So it’s all around internal pressure, and internal preparation. We have to respect who we’re playing but we can’t control what they’re doing, we can only try and fight for ourselves. We’ve got a really important game this week, we’ve got a few guys leaving as well, and that’ll come out in the wash, but these guys like Gareth Baxter, who’s been a stalwart, this could be his last game at the Club. So there’ll be a number of other guys who’ve played a lot of rugby for this club having their final outing – so Saturday is important for a lot of different reasons. We’re also desperate for that first win. We’re focusing on process over product but, you know, the product for us is winning games of rugby; we strive to win in every game and we haven’t done so so far. I guess the disappointment from Coventry, the striving for winning and sending guys off is the motivation for this weekend. And then, I guess, ultimately that wraps all of those three things up for our supporters, and our families and our friends, and people that want us to do well. And we’ll be out there trying to prove that we’re a team to be proud of.
“With regard to the Ealing game, the supporters were immense. We asked for it, didn’t we? I suppose people like to come and see the David and Goliath and everyone roots for the underdog. And we certainly were the underdog in that Ealing game. We rattled them for 70 minutes and they rallied and showed some class at the end to put us away. But yeah, that support was, we earned it, you know? They don’t just yell because they want to yell. They yell or they support and they cheer and they get behind us because we’re playing well. So, it’s a cycle. If we’re not giving them anything to cheer about, then it’s going to be quiet. So we want to feed on that support and the boys love that energy. And we’ll hopefully get that this week at home again. And hopefully we’ll get some small amount of momentum going into the off season and guys can put their feet up knowing that they’ve given everything they’ve got with a bit of a positive to finish. Ultimately, though, it won’t affect what we’re doing next year. This group won’t be together ever again after these next two weeks. So we’re going to put all we got into this and hopefully we come out on the right side and I’d say I’ll be itching to get back into it later in the pre-season.
“We’ve previewed Hartpury. They’re a typical, positive playing, side and the weather suits them. The 3G suited them on the day at their place in the freezing cold – but we made the most of it and we scored some really good tries. James Pater finished them off – he was excellent that day but he was on the end of a very good team performance. We had some scrum issues in the last 10-15 minutes of that game and I think we gave five scrum penalties away – you can’t finish off a good team like that without functioning for the full 80 minutes in the scrum. So that’s something we’ll be mindful of. Yes, they play positive football but they still rock up and do the hard stuff, the scrum and the maul and the dark arts. So we’ve looked a little bit at them, but again, it’s about us and what we can control and that’s something we’ve been focusing on this week. I want to see the emotion pour out of the boys this week – they’re beat up emotionally and mentally, probably not as much physically from that defeat at Coventry, so I want to see the emotion pour out of them and see a bounce-back and a fight. It’s all about how you you get up after you’ve been knocked down. So that’s something I want to see from them this week – a reaction to the hurt from the last time we played. And in the back of their minds, the remembrance of the Ealing performance, the Doncaster games, the Nottingham games,and Bedford away. I want to see that and remember how good we can be, and if we can put the emotion together, and the quality together, then we’ll tip up a team at some point. And if it doesn’t happen, it’s not through want of, or lack of, effort and desire”.
Jake Ellwood, Jack Doorey-Palmer, Rhys Fulford, Dan Eckersley, Ben Currie, Otu Mausia and Paul Wulf-Masoe all make their final appearances in Cambridge colours at Ellgia Fields – they’re all moving on at the end of the season. And Gareth Baxter makes his final home appearance before retiring after next week’s match at Ampthill. Billy Pasco – from Northampton Saints – comes in at centre for the injured Levi Reweti.
Cambridge line-up
15 Ben Currie
14 Joe Green
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
8 Ben Adams (C)
Reinforcements
16 Joe Plunkett 17 Tabuna Maka 18 Francois Rossouw 19 Charlie Friend 20 Arthur Thomas 21 Ollie Allan 22 Eparama Rokodrava 23 Sam Johnson