Richie Williams has made a couple of changes to his squad for the first Championship away trip of the season. The Blood & Sand travel to Paton Field to take on Caldy at 3pm on Saturday 28th of September, looking to kick start their season following last weekend’s home reverse against Chinnor. Cambridge will debut their new STC Teamwear blue away strip on the Wirral. This was last season’s final away fixture – it was heading for a draw but a last-gasp 50m penalty goal gave Caldy the win by 31 points to 28.
Here’s Richie:
“On a personal level it’s one of my favourite places to go in the Championship. It’s a ‘proper’ rugby club and what they’ve built there is fantastic. They’ve had more or less the same group of players through the National Leagues too and for us it’s a really good game to have following last week’s disappointing result.We know what to expect and they’ll be looking for their first win as well, having lost at Beford Blues last weekend.
“They’ve not brought in many new players this season but what they’re about is that work ethic and desire and they’ll fight hard. I think for us, we know all that and we’re really clear within the group what we need to do to get the result we want on Saturday. We know the DNA of our side and it’s a good opportunity for us to show what a Cambridge side should look like in the Championship after last week’s performance”.
There are a couple of changes to last week’s squad. The starting XV remain the same. Northampton Saints loan prop Beltus Nonleh is amongst the replacements in a 6-2 split. Scrum half Pete White will make his Cambridge debut from the bench. Joe Tarrant and Seb Brownhill are still returning to full fitness. Joe Green, Matty Jones and Jake Bridges drop out of last week’s 23 -Tom Hoppe and Matt Williams also miss out this weekend.
Cambridge line-up: 15- Arthur Lennon 14- Josh Skelcey 13- Matt Hema 12- Ollie Betteridge 11- Eli Caven 10- Louis Grimoldby (CC) 9- Ruaridh Dawson 1- Jake Elwood 2- Ben Brownlie 3- Billy Walker 4- Kayde Sylvester 5- George Bretag-Norris (CC) 6- Iestyn Rees 7- Jared Cardew 8- Jack Bartlett 16- Morgan Veness 17- Zac Nearchou 18- Beltus Nonleh 19- Gareth Baxter 20- Ben Adams 21- Sam Hanks 22- Pete White 23- Matt Dawson