Cam fail to stick to the Plan as they lose on the road

So, on this rather cold April Saturday the team claimed another first as they travelled to Harpenden in the first game in the Papa John Cup and despite missing a number of the regular backs they were quietly confident of taking the first step on the road to another Twickenham appearance.
The game saw Cam kick off proceedings playing on the 4G pitch and playing into quite a stiff breeze and despite conceding a try in the opening minutes the black and ambers soon got into their stride and played some really good, joined up, rugby as we saw BLS charge through the centre of the field before setting Murph and Bazza up for a dart to the corner and although held up initially the ball soon found winger Daniel Cavidi, having his first start with the 1s, and no one could stop the winger as he crossed for an unconverted score with just 8 mins played.

The black and amber pressure continued straight from the restart as they won a couple of pens and found themselves back down in the redzone and their efforts were rewarded when our Ozzie Mole went over at the back of a great lineout catch and drive and with Ben Stevens, another debutant at 10, slotting the conversion the score had moved to 7-12 with just 14 mins on the clock.
And this was not the end of matters as with only 18 mins on the clock more pressure from the restart saw fullback Vic make a great break before being held up just short but quickly recycled possession saw Bazza cross for an unconverted try and a score of 7-17 with less than a quarter of the match gone.

To their credit the home side did not allow this try scoring spree affect their game plan and with Cam seemingly moving way off script the next 60 mins effectively ended up as an arm wrestle and when Cam lost loose head Greg to a head injury their dominance at scrum time seemed to disappear and in the closing stages of the half the home side narrowed the gap with another converted try.

At this stage the Cam faithful were quietly confident that with the wind behind them in the second 40 that they would make the game their own but despite piling on the pressure during the first 15 mins of the second half Cam failed to breach an extremely motivated Harpenden defence and simple mistakes seemed to creep into their game which allowed the hosts back into things.
On 65 mins a couple of Cam errors saw Harpenden throwing in to a lineout on the Cam 5m line and an excellent catch and drive gave them the lead with a converted try.
Cam did find some fire at this time and despite the restart resulting in a scrum on halfway the black and ambers did pressure the home whitewash in an effort to regain the lead but in the closing stages they lost possession and from almost nowhere the home side found the energy and desire to claim a bonus point try in the final action of the day.

So a poor performance overall by the black and ambers apart from that period of 20 mins or so in the first half when they scored all of their points and again it just shows that when you execute the plan you get results. Despite the loss however we had good performances from the 3 debutants this week with winger Dan having a stormer until he was injured, Frank, on the other wing had few opportunities to show what he could do as he saw so little of the ball and Ben at 10 looked very confident in such a pivotal role.

So next week we see the visit of Shelford to Watchetts for the second of our 3 group games and with both sides losing today a result will see the end of one of the club's Twickenham dream while the other may live to fight another day.

And Finally – well it was always going to be tough for the C&Ws to have to follow the disaster of last week on the Tyne with a trip to European Cup Holders La Rochelle for a place in the quarters. In the event the injury ravaged squad put in a colossal performance in fact they were leading by 4 points until the dying minutes to eventually concede a try and lose 29-26.

Pic, by Dinger, shows Bazza fighting to score his try