Cambridge Rugby Club put in contrasting performances during both halves of RFU Championship clash against Cornish Pirates

Director of rugby and head coach Richie Williams was left with mixed emotions after Cambridge’s 40-33 defeat at home to Cornish Pirates on Saturday.

On the one hand, Williams was disappointed by an error-strewn first-half display that saw Cambridge go into the break with a 26-7 deficit.

But there was also an element of pride about the way that his charges responded after the restart and while the gap ultimately proved to be too big to bridge, Cambridge did come away with a couple of bonus points.

“For the neutral observer that will have been a really good game to watch. If you’ve paid money to watch that you’ve seen 73 points in total so you can’t complain,” Williams told the Richie & Jacko Podcast

“For us, we weren’t at the expected level in that first half. We started really brightly, we scored early and then the second quarter we were really inaccurate in some aspects of our play. Our line-out was sloppy, we made a few individual errors and they cost us. We’ve got to learn from that very quickly (because) it’s happened a lot this season.

“That’s probably the main difference between this level and National 1 – any mistake you make is severely punished. Credit to the players, they dusted themselves off at half-time. We put a plan together for the second half and we knew having seven forwards on the bench, they were going to make a difference.

“I’m really proud of the way we’re finishing games. Not many teams would have come back the way we came back today and managed to get two points from that game.

“We were out of it on 50 minutes so that’s the fight, the grit and the determination that we’ve got as a group, but we also know what could have been if we were a little bit better and more accurate with a lot of our game.”

Ben Brownlie (2), Kwaku Asiedu, Elias Caven and Nahum Merigan all dotted down for Cambridge against the Pirates, with Steffan James adding four conversions.

Cambridge, who have moved off the foot of the Championship table, will return to action on 27 January when Caldy will be the visitors to Ellgia Fields.