News
CUARLFC 38 Northampton Uni 6
The 2nd round of the BUCS Shield brought the blues against Northampton Uni of the premier division south and would be a good test of how far the players have come over the past couple of weeks.Northampton fielded the biggest pack the blues have faced this year as well as big units on the interchange so the plan was to work to the strengths of the team and to play with patience as this would be a test of the whole team performance.Both teams started strongly and the hits were punishing from both sides and certainly the northants players weren’t shy in letting the cambridge players know what they thought of them!
After some smart play and back to back sets cambridge scored tries on both sides of the field and started to control the ruck area in both defence but particularly attack.The big northampton forwards and backs for that matter were struggling with the lateral agility needed to counter the footwork and support lines cambridge were throwing at them and half time came with a scoreline of CUARLFC 24 Northampton 0.It was vital that the players kept on with the game plan that was working against the gremlins and three more tries in the first eight minutes of the second half effectively put the match to bed with a scoreline of 38-0 and the blues should have gone on with it but with a couple of penalties the momentum shifted and the visitors scored a converted try to give them something to work on for the remaining 25 minutes.The match then degenerated into a couple of brawls and some interesting refereeing decisions making the match hard work for the blues to get any good ball sets and the match thankfully reached it’s conclusion with no major incidents.
Final score CUARLFC 38 Northampton 6
Captain George Sykes was happy with the team’s attitude , “We needed to play a team like northampton who were aggressive from the off and match fire with fire.We had to feel our way into the match but John had given us guidance on how to approach the opening twenty minutes and the lads stuck to it well and got a deserved half time scoreline with which we built on pretty quickly in the second half.I was really happy with the discipline we showed under a lot of provocation and i think this match is exactly what we needed in the final two weeks of the season.“
Scorers.
Tries. Cushing(2) , Wingate-Saul (2) , Johnstone , Stechman , Morrissey.
Cons. Cushing (5)