News
CUARLFC 22 Sheffield University 4
The way the fixtures have fallen for the blues means that every fixture becomes more of a test and a step up from the last fixture and the visit of Sheffield Uni was a great way to start november and see where the squad stood a third of the way through the season.
The blues were still short on experience up front due to injury and non availability but welcomed back Paddy Hunt into a front row berth after being out for a month due to injury for what would be a physical and technical challenge.Sheffield showed very early on that they were organized , structured and aggressive in the way that they started and yards were hard to make for both sides as the collisions were dominant and both defensive lines could get set and dish some more punishment out.It took twenty minutes before a defensive line was breached and it was sheffield who scored our wide after some good lead up work and offloading in collision to free up some space on the edge.From the resulting restart sheffield turned the ball over on tackle 2 and after a set of six battering the sheffield line a grubber from pitt- rashid rebounded back off the defensive line and into his arms leaving a five metre dash to the line for a try.Field position from this point was dominated by cambridge and sheffield didn’t help their cause with two sin binnings for hitting the kicker late and in this period cambridge racked up another couple of tries which with conversions gave a half time score of CUARLFC 16 Sheffield 4.
This was never going to be a high scoring game so defensive duties would have to be looked after by everybody on the field and the previous skills session had worked on good communication and shape in defence and it was great to see transfer on to the playing field and sheffield worked both the ruck and the edges in attack but the skills in the tackle were solid and there was no way through for the raids sheffield mounted during the second stanza.Cambridge suffered from poor execution in the final third with the ball in hand during their good ball sets and this will be worked on in the coming weeks.A final try for max stechman towards the end of the game put it to bed as a contest and the blues were happy with a final scoreline of CUARLFC 22 Sheffield 4.
Coach evans was happy with defence but less so with attack , “ The month of october is spent on learning the core skills of our sport and defensive organization and tackle technique is top of the list.The lads are doing well in that area and will only improve more and more as the weeks go on.The ruck running was good in parts but with new players in this part of the field we have to show patience and build it up week by week .The attck in the final third is the next area to get systems in place but this year’s squad are 3 weeks in front of the previous squad in preperation so we are very happy with the direction we are travelling in.Next week’s away game at Notts Trent will be a tough test as it was last year and we will need to improve again to achieve our goals set for next week.“
Scorers.
Tries. Pitt-Rashid , Sykes , Commin , Stechman
Cons.Sykes (3)