It all starts again on Saturday 5th September as Craig Newby’s remodelled Cambridge side travel to Birmingham Moseley for what is sure to be a fiercely competitive opener to a monster season! We’re back in the most demanding of leagues, National One – where high-scoring, close encounters are the norm and we’ll be challenging ourselves against thirteen other teams, taking on eleven old foes and visiting three new grounds and two new opponents…and there are four local derbies to boot…
So – the National One campaign starts this coming weekend, at Birmingham Moseley, who narrowly avoided the drop to National Two last season by, equally narrowly, beating Oundle in a play-off. We look forward to returning to Billesley Common, one of the bigger and better-appointed grounds in the division. Our first home game is against newly-promoted Bury St Edmunds, last season’s National Two East champions – where we’ll lock horns with a multitude of former Cambridge players, coaches, and staff. Round 3 takes us to Tonbridge Juddians, and Leeds Tykes visit us in Round 4. It’s a long weekend away for Round 5 as we make the trip to Plymouth Albion, who just missed out on promotion to the Champ last season – and Round 6 sees us at home to Camborne.
Other notable dates in the first half of the fixture list are trips to Sheffield, Rosslyn Park, Sale FC and Bishop’s Stortford (on December 5th) before going to Bury St Edmunds in the last fixture before Christmas. Visitors to Ellgia Fields include, in order, London Scottish, Dings Crusaders, and Rams. The two sides we haven’t yet faced in the National Leagues are Sheffield and Camborne. Dings have a new ground – another new experience for the travelling fans. So – more games, a multitude of old foes and new opponents, and a new squad, await!
Skipper Ben Adams is looking forward to running out at Moseley. “With pre-season almost over, we’re looking – and feeling – a lot more settled. We had a good hit-out against Colchester. The Colchester one was a nice way to put our systems into practice. And then, a very tough test against Bedford that exposed a lot of things that we need to work on. So I’m feeling pretty confident and hopefully we can put it all out on the field. There is, genuinely, a different feel about this season – I think a lot of that is down to the fact there’re so many new faces. There’s not been any sort of downplaying. The new faces have been really good, really energetic, and young – youth is always good! We’ve got a lot of positivity and even though we’ve had one good game, one tough test, it feels positive, it feels like we’re starting the season with our front foot forward. We’re not focusing on anything but Moseley. Moseley have been a tough test for us for a long time when we were in National One. I’m expecting them to be a lot stronger – the stayed up by the skin of their teeth last year – so we’re only focusing on them, and we’ll deal with those others later.”
Fellow back row Chris Mills is equally enthusiastic, saying, ” I think we’re pretty confident. I thought it was a really positive run-out against Colchester, and there were positives from the Bedford game, you know, despite the score-line, and then for a lot of other new lads to get a run out against a real quality side in the second half and see how fast men’s rugby can be. I don’t think we’re going to come up against a much tougher opponent this season, bar maybe Plymouth. I think Camborne are really up for it this year, with the players that they’ve got coming in. But I think the boys are pretty confident, looking forward to the fixtures ahead. I think we got a good start to the season as well. If we can go and get a win on the road at Moseley, I think that could just snowball. Really looking forward to Bury here, first home game. It’ll be a big event. It’s a local derby. There’ll be lots of people down. It’s just a real chance for us to just, I think, kick on. I’d say were confident in our ability and confident of what we can do and I think we will do well.”
Amongst the new boys, prop Callum Smyth can’t wait to tear in to the new campaign. He has also dropped down from Champ Rugby – and is targeting a return. “I was at Worcester Warriors last year, in a squad that was thrown together and then started on day one! Nobody knew anybody, apart from playing in the past at previous clubs with the odd one or two players. We ended up going on to win the season! There are lot of new faces here this time around, there’s a lot of young guns in the team, and they’re ambitious and striving for greatness – so they’re earning their stripes gradually, but it’s pretty good here! It’s a good culture everybody’s working hard, and we’re all putting effort in so, yeah, I’m happy! I’m hoping for promotion – I don’t want to play just to play rugby, I want to play to win things and I think we’ve got a good group of lads here, everyone’s ambitious, everybody has had the hurt from the last two seasons instilled in us so we want to deliver for the Club and the supporters. Cambridge should be playing Champ Rugby – so we’re going do everything we can to get us back up!”
Whatever happens this time out, it’s going to be exciting, and we’re going to see some competitive games. Strap yourselves in for another proper rollercoaster ride!