Due to Wimbledon conceding their Canterbury fixture a last minute friendly was arranged with neighbours Royston First XV.
The match was played on a bright sunny afternoon in a force 8 wind,with the sheep on the Heath initially outnumbering the spectators, bringing back fond memories of your correspondent's early rugby life. Royston won the toss & elected to play with the wind, down the slope, with the afternoon sun behind them.
Straight from the kick-off Cambridge piled the pressure on a Royston side yet to win this season in their own league or cup & but for misshandling & lack of leadership could have been over the line twice in the first 5 minutes. It was Royston however who put the first points on the board after 7 minutes.The Royston full-back kicked high & long out of defence,the ball coming out of the sun landed between Tony at full back & right wing Paul. Itcould have bounced into either player, instead it bounced sideways into the hands of the Royston right wing, following up at speed who ran in under the posts for a converted try 7-0 .
Cambridge did not allow this to affect their play & returned to the attack from the restart. Indeed they should have scored after some good driving play by the forwards, only for Sam to lose control of the ball as he dived over the line. From the 5m scrum, again slow support lost Cambridge the ruck & Royston should have scored again when their full back broke clear drew Tony & passed to their 13 running in support who, with the line beckoning, dropped the ball. The remainder of the half was again dominated by Cambridge until with 5 minutes to go, during a period of intense Cambridge pressure, the Royston no 10 kicked the ball over the flat Cambridge back line. This time the 15/13 combination took their opportunity and scored under the posts for another converted try. Half-Time 14-0
It was now Cambridge's turn to run down the hill with the wind, which by now had dropped significantly. Straight from the start, the pack, which had begun to fire on all cylinders, put their tiring Royston opposite numbers under intense pressure, forcing them to resort to handling in the ruck & diving over, conceding 3 penalties in a row, which, this close to the Royston line should have resulted in a try, but a lack of ideas wasted the first 2. When the 3rd was given, wing forward Phil didn't wait for the Cambridge leadership to decide what to do this time but took the quick tap & dived over the line for Cambridge's first try in the corner. 14-5.
Almost from the re-start Cambridge were straight back down the field camped in the Royston 22m area. Again, Cambridge pressure caused Royston to give away a penalty for handling in the ruck, (surely only the fact that this was a friendly kept members of the Royston pack on the pitch) Big Warren, taking his cue from Phil took a quick tap and went over in the corner for Cambridge's second try, which again went unconverted. 14-10.
Rolling substitution meant that by now the tiring pack were playing against a completely different front row than they'd started against, so started to giveaway some of the loose ball & were turned over once or twice in set scrums, which resulted in more Royston possession in the last quarter of the match. However, they had one more big effort left. After a long period of Royston pressure, Juan Antonio got the chance to relieve the pressure with a long free kick into the Royston half. Fast follow-up by the Cambridge backs caused the Royston right wing to hold onto the ball when he was tackled trying to run out of defence. Cambridge looked to have once again wasted a scoring opportunity when the throw in from the kick to touch was adjudged not straight. Lo & behold, our pack won the scrum against the head. Fast ball along the line finally gave our backs some reward for their efforts when Mike ran in for the try & put Cambridge in front for the first time. Juan converted the try to put Cambridge ahead 14-17.
The last 10 minutes were riddled with handling errors by both sides & resulted in scrum after scrum as Royston pushed for winning points but ran upagainst a determined defence & were comfortably held by a Cambridge side which looked to extend their lead but a dropped ball or two meant that the score remained the same to the end.
A much better performance from the Cambridge pack, playing in this format for the first time. Loss of our Fijian contingent to embarkation leave for foreign duty, meant that our backs didn't fire on all cylinders,with our speedy wingers rarely seeing the ball in open play. When everything comes together, some unfortunateteam is going to get a thrashing.
Teams 
