‘Let’s finish the term with a win’
WILLIAMS DETERMINED TO GO INTO THE NEXT CAMPAIGN ON A HIGH
CAMBRIDGE director of rugby Richie Williams is looking for his side to head into the close season “off the back of a good win” as they round off their maiden Championship campaign against Ampthill today.
The Blood & Sand host their seventh-placed opponents at Volac Park this afternoon, 3pm kick-off, in what is the club’s final game of a challenging season.
Cambridge will finish the campaign bottom of the table, but the Blood & Sand’s director of rugby is hoping that his side can sign off their season on a positive note.
“They’ve been really good this season, they’ve had a strong partnership with Saracens obviously, and they’ve had a lot of their good, young players that have played there most weeks. It’s going to be a tough one to finish off,” Williams told the Richie & Jacko Podcast.
“It’s good that we’re at home, and we’ll know what we’ll need to do to get points from that game. Neither team are competing to win the league, so it could be a really freeflowing encounter.
“For us, I think we want to make sure that we put ourselves in the best position to come away with points, and it’d be a really nice way to go into the off season, off the back of a good win, but there’s a lot of hard work to do to get to that point.
“I think Ampthill are pretty freeflowing at the moment, they’re scoring tries quickly with some of the players that they’ve got, so defensively we’ll have to be on it, but we also think that we can cause them problems with the way that we play.”
Cambridge have found the step up to the Championship a tough one to make, with the Blood & Sand winning just two of their 19 league matches to date this term.
The club are competing in the second tier for the first time in their history, after winning National One last year.
With no relegation from the Championship this season, Williams’ side have been afforded another chance at the level, and the director of rugby believes that a few additions over the summer could help to turn some narrow defeats into wins next time around.
“Every game is nuanced slightly differently. The trip to Caldy, they play a different type of rugby than what Ampthill will play, who play a different type of rugby to what Bedford play. I guess for us, being new to this league, we’ve learned the hard way at times this season,” Williams added. “I think we had a bit of a luxury the last few seasons of knowing all our opponents in depth, because we’ve played them so often, whereas this season, a lot of the fixtures that we’ve played, we’ve not played opposition teams before. We’ll be better for that next season.
“I think we feel that we’re not a million miles away from getting more points and more wins. Recruitment for next season is heavily focused on some of the areas where we’ve got those deficiencies, and I’d like to think with the new recruits that are coming in, they’ll make a big difference, particularly to the close games where we’ve lost.
“I think if we can turn those results around and make them positive results, then the league position will look completely different to what it looks like now.”