Cambridge RUFC

Saved from extinction for the cost of ‘one hundred trips to Paris’, Cambridge leapt from third to first on the final day of the season to secure what seemed an unlikely promotion to the Championship. It’s a story that even their former chair Jeffrey Archer couldn’t make up. 

It was around twenty minutes into the biggest match of Cambridge RUFC’s one-hundred-year history, that Jeffrey Archer was reaching the point of shifting uncomfortably in his seat. 

In the build-up to the final game of this season, the former Cambridge chairman, who also happens to be one of the most popular authors in the history of the printed word, had received a call from the RFU, telling him the president of the RFU would be otherwise engaged at Twickenham, for the TikTok Six Nations showdown between England and France. Could Jeffrey stand in and present the trophy if Cambridge won the National League 1 title? “Not a request that one can turn down,” he tells Rugby Journal.

But with the score standing at 0-3 to the visitors, Birmingham Moseley, he wondered if he would have to quietly smuggle the trophy, along with all the medals, out of Volac Park if Cambridge failed to get the bonus point win needed to overhaul Rams RFC and earn them promotion to the Championship.

Even approaching the half-hour mark Cambridge were still trailing 0-3 and that low-level anxiety was starting to rise around the ground when a scrum collapsed about eight yards from Moseley’s try line. Just a minute or so later, and six passes from the left to the right would end with Joe Green racing into the corner to score the first try of the afternoon. From that moment onwards the match turned into a procession that ended in a coronation. “I thought it would be hard for us to get four tries because winning the game simply wasn’t enough,” says Jeffrey. “Although I remained hopeful that we would settle down, I must say I was shocked that we ended up scoring seven tries.” 

The final score was Cambridge 59 Birmingham Moseley 10.

“It was weird,” he continues. “You know, the only time Cambridge were top of National League 1 was at the end of the last game of the season. We were fourth, we were third…”

Indeed, the story of the season in National League 1 was remarkable in itself – more of that later – but to truly appreciate what Cambridge achieved in reaching the Championship you need to set it in the context of the club’s history. 

It’s a tale with enough plot twists to satisfy any novelist and especially one with a career as colourful as Jeffrey’s. And for the purpose of this particular narrative, we’ll start from the moment that he became chairman in 1980, a few months after his most successful novel had been published. Kane and Abel sold a million copies in the first week and ranks among the top 100 best-selling books of all time. “The club was in dire straits,” says Jeffrey. “I have a great passion for rugby. The reason it’s Cambridge is that my wife was a Don at Cambridge University. Also, the ground is three minutes away (in Grantchester), so it was an obvious place for me to have a very relaxing and fun afternoon and my children would go there to play mini rugby. But I took it very seriously when I was chairman.

“The man who preceded me said the whole place needed discipline and order. And he wanted someone to come in, who they didn’t know well and who could beat them up,” figuratively speaking, of course. “So, I appeared out of the clouds, and indeed, I was pretty damn tough. Yes, and I didn’t make too many friends doing that. But we went up a division. And I hoped that would be the beginning of (the club) taking it all a bit more seriously.”

Following Jeffrey’s three-year stint. Cambridge became a more tightly run outfit. Then, in 1999, the club won promotion to London 1, followed by a couple of yo-yo years, before a golden era saw the ‘Blood and Sand’, as they are otherwise known, secure a hat-trick of promotions between 2004 and 2006 and a place in National League 1. 

Cambridge continued on their upward trajectory and invested in a squad capable of making a serious push for promotion, finishing second in the 2008-9 season which included a run of fifteen games without defeat. 

In previous years that would have been good enough to move up to the Championship, but midway through the campaign the RFU changed the rules meaning only one team could go up, which would be Birmingham, and Cambridge were collateral damage in the shake-up. 

It was literally promotion or bust in 2010 and finishing fourth meant there was no money left to pay the players. At this point, local businessman Steve Bowller was brought in to try and dig Cambridge out of a big financial hole. “Somewhere towards the end of September 2010, a meeting was called at the club where most of the senior club officers resigned,” recalls Steve.  “Rumours had been circulating for a while that Cambridge were in financial trouble and I was asked to attend because I was a local businessman. With the resignations came confirmation that the club had received a winding up petition for £250,000 from HMRC which had to be settled by 8 December, and with that, the officers left the room.”

That’s certainly one way to make a dramatic exit. 

So, Steve had to quickly think about how he could convince supporters and donors to dig deep and save Cambridge. “I made the suggestion that a weekend in Paris would cost £2,500 and there were many people in the club, and Cambridge in general, who would pay that amount,” he explains. “So, one hundred trips to Paris not taken and we have got the money. A gentleman sitting next to me scribbled on a post-it note ‘I’ll give two trips’ and I announced enthusiastically, ‘and I think we can certainly do it!’”

Setting aside whether one would normally holiday in Paris back in 2010 on that sort of budget, the underlying logic was sound enough. What would you be willing to sacrifice for a year or two, against something you may lose forever which is part of the fabric of your life? “A small group was formed to focus on the fundraising and immediate operational needs, the season had started after all,” continues Steve. “We had no handover, just boxes with loose bits of paper tipped in them. Martin Davies worked on the administration. Andrew McGahey – who later became chair of the club’s Charitable Youth Trust – networked with local businesses asking for favours with legal aspects etc and (current chairman) Rob Dean set about trying to raise money for what we called ‘the lifeboat fund’. My job was to try and knit things together, keep up morale, and keep the first team on the pitch.

“Job number one was to tell the players that there was no more money. They had been promised back pay for some while and it was time to break the uncomfortable news. We called a meeting and our formidable flanker Darren Fox was in the front row of chairs when I boldly explained the situation. He said, ‘Well at least someone has told us the fucking truth’.

“The money was coming in but to encourage people to donate with confidence, the funds were put into a solicitor’s account so that in the event of failing to reach our target, it would all be returned.”

Another twist in the tale also provided a stroke of good fortune. Well, good for Cambridge anyway. The club’s account was with the Bank of Scotland which was about to become part of the Lloyds Banking Group – a merger that occurred in the wake of a global financial crisis. “My company banked with Lloyds and I explained to my corporate manager what I was doing,” says Steve. “He blew a gasket! But when he calmed down I asked if he knew the director of the Lloyds business recovery unit. He did and the next thing we had a meeting arranged. Guy Mulley was a club member and social referee at Cambridge and was on a sabbatical from (accounting and consulting multinational) Grant Thornton. 

“Guy and Martin put together cash flow forecasts for the next five years along with a detailed business plan and off we went to the meeting. 

“At the end, the Lloyds director looked me in the eye and said, ‘And you expect me to not only continue your loan but nearly double it?’. So, I looked him back in the eye and said, ‘yes’. There was a short pause and then he said, ‘okay’.”

As a result, only one player took legal action against Cambridge for breach of contract and, by 2012, order had been restored. Not only did the club get back on a secure footing but over the next decade it was able to spend £500,000 (with some support from Sport England and Cambridge City Council) on new changing rooms and medical facilities at the ground.

For the man who would transform the team on the pitch and lead them to this year’s National League 1 title, 2012 would also be a pivotal year.

Richie Williams was sat in a bar in Antwerp ready to call time on what had initially been a dispiriting spell coaching in Belgium. 

An abbreviated version of Richie’s story goes like this. Born in Wales, he grew up watching Neath, played for Aberavon and also turned out for the Welsh student team. He moved to Oxfordshire to take up a teaching role in 2002 and combined that with playing for Grove RFC and Chinnor before the club became a force at National League level. Being a PE teacher ignited his desire to become a coach as did the impact of Lynn Evans who was then coach at Chinnor. He became head of rugby at Oxford Brooks University and combined that with a role of an RFU coaching development officer.

Richie then took a sabbatical and moved to Antwerp in 2012 to work with the Belgian national association, coaching the national women’s sevens team as well as a club side in Antwerp. “The way the rugby season works in Belgium, they have quite harsh winters, so they have winter break from December and rugby restarts in February,” he explains. “I found that a real challenge and when a number of my friends, whom I played rugby with at Chinnor, came to see me in January, I was really struggling. Rugby has always been a good release for me and not having that for three months was a real strain, combined with the fact that we’d not started that season well; I think we’d won two games out of eight. 

“So, I began to sort of doubt what I was doing,” he admits. “And being in a foreign country, not having that support network around me was really difficult. I vividly remember getting emotional in the pub. There was a bit of the drink talking, obviously, but I was saying to my friends, ‘I think I’ve made a mistake, I want to come back to the UK’.

“One of my closest friends said, ‘Look, stick it out for three months, see where you’re at the end of the season, and then you can reassess whether you want to do another year.’ That turned out to be the best advice I could have had.

“I had to be succinct with the players,” explains Richie. “We had to simplify things on certain levels, to make sure that there was that sort of clarity and understanding. I stayed in Belgium, and we had a really good second half of the season, I think we won all of our games to finish fourth in the league. And that then allowed me in the second year to build on that, to work a bit more closely with the women’s international team. Antwerp finished runners-up and Belgium women were competing against the likes of England and France. 

“I ended up having an amazing experience over there,” he continues. “But you know, it could have been so different if I wouldn’t have stuck that out and got through a difficult period. 

“A number of those young Belgian players are now playing top-level rugby in France, as well as a couple in the UK that I brought over. It was such a good life experience and working abroad is something I would recommend to other young coaches to develop their skill set.”

Richie returned to England in 2015, although he also later had a spell as a consultant to Hungary, most memorably when they competed at a tournament in Milton Keynes, with a squad so short on funds they had to sleep in the dressing rooms. 

It was through heading up the England Counties Under-20s programme that he caught the attention of Cambridge, including the aforementioned chairman Rob Dean.  “My first game with the under 20s was as assistant coach against Georgia,” says Richie. “Funnily enough, the match was at Cambridge and one of our players on that day was Kwaku Asiedu, who now plays for us and was top try scorer in the league this year. He’s 28 now and one of the most athletic players that I’ve seen at this level.”

Richie took up the role of director of rugby at Cambridge in the summer of 2018, and things didn’t go especially well in his first season at Volac Park, with the team only spared from relegation  when a late try from Birmingham Moseley’s Jacques Le Roux against Caldy, meant Caldy went down instead. 

But chair Rob and several committee members actually doubled down and reaffirmed their support for Richie. “Yeah, it’s certainly been an extraordinary time, especially when you also consider Covid as well,” says the coach.

After finishing fourth last season, Cambridge got off to a solid start in the 2022-23 campaign, then not only kept on winning during the run-in but did so by wide margins. 

And they had to. Rams and Sale FC finished the season with 114 and 113 points respectively. Collectively, the top three made this the most exciting title race in English rugby. A 31-10 win away at Plymouth Albion meant Cambridge had their destiny in their own hands going into the last game and their big win meant they too reached 114 points and won the title on points difference.

There’s scant evidence of a rugby match taking place in Cambridge during the picturesquely pleasant 30-minute walk from the train station to Volac Park, crossing the River Cam, with the obligatory tourists being punted along the waterway by students.

But once you hit Grantchester Road, and walk a hundred yards past a series of semi-detached houses, Volac Park suddenly appears. And, for this final, title-deciding game, it’s absolutely heaving with spectators even perched on top of a camper van to get a proper view.

Although there’s meant to be a charge of £10 on the gate to get in, it isn’t entirely clear where ‘the gate’ was. Even if the club wasn’t able to accurately count the matchday attendance – it could have been anything between 1,500 and 2,000 – they more than made up for it with takings behind the bar. 

Perched on the halfway line with a pint is a man resplendent in a club blazer and tie. His name is Charlie Tennant and there were few people for whom promotion means more. “I joined in 1967, aged fifteen,” says Charlie. “Bedford tried to pinch me when I was club captain (in 1978) but I declined their kind offer. I mean, you can’t leave your own club when you’re skipper!

“Traditionally the team would get confused with Cambridge University and our annual match against them would be our biggest fixture,” continues Charlie. “Back then the university team was so strong and could field international players. The professional era laid that to waste. We don’t play them anymore and the club can’t afford to have players get injured in a pre-season game.”

Charlie bemoans the lack of coverage that Cambridge get on regional TV. “All they talk about is Luton Town,” he says. “And we don’t have a huge following in the city, although you wouldn’t think that judging by today.”

Yes, it is safe to say that Cambridge RUFC had never seen anything quite like this and Charlie has almost been living vicariously through the team. “In a way, it’s the peak my of career,” he says. “We never made it as players but to see this club in the Championship means the absolute world to me.”

Despite arriving in the second tier, Cambridge will remain semi-professional next season and are keen to enjoy the ride wherever it may take them. 

Caldy, who also surprised many when they saw off Sale for the National League 1 title last year, will provide inspiration on and off the pitch. The club has already had informal chats with the Cheshire outfit to see what they can learn from them. 

Also, the experience of 2010 has taught them not to get carried away by this season’s success and to see the bigger picture. “I’m probably the one who always takes an optimistic view,” says chairman Rob. “But there are guys in the committee who, were we to start getting a little bit carried away, would rein us in and remind us this is a long-term project. We could spend money on big-name players but you don’t always get what you pay for. 

“We’ve spent a good deal of money on improving the pitch and extended changing rooms. We’ve also spent on minis and youths, and the women’s team. And we’ve got a new digital ticketing system. I think whatever we’ve invested in the first team we’ve more than matched in the rest of the club.”

While Richie has put together a close-knit squad, he’s also clearly not afraid of being decisive. After that brush with relegation, he got rid of two coaches and several senior players. “You shape your own path,” says Richie. “And I think all of those experiences that I’ve referenced have gotten me to where I am now. I’d like to think if anyone spoke to any of the players in the club, they’d say that I was honest and I’d always communicate with players, irrespective of whether they are in the starting fifteen or not playing.”

When asked what he thinks of his coach, Cambridge player of the season, and man-mountain, Kieran Frost, says: “He’s a different breed. You work hard for him and there’s nothing toxic here because of the culture he has introduced into the club. It’s a bit of a cliché, but it’s like a family. He doesn’t shout or scream. You don’t want to disappoint him. That would be worse than him getting angry if you see what I mean.”

As for Richie... “I’ve got a romantic notion of coaching in Wales one day,” he admits. “But one of my big goals was to take a team into the Championship and I want to develop this squad even further. I’m not naive. We’re coming up against some teams who have full-time professional players but we played Nottingham in a pre-season match last August and we only lost that game by one score. 

“I’ve got some really fond memories of watching people like Paul Turner and Mike Rayer, who are both coaching in the Championship now for Ampthill and Bedford. So, it will be a bit of a surreal experience coming up against guys that I used to watch playing in Wales.”

But while Rob and Richie are pragmatic about the size of the challenge next season, Jeffrey has taken a rather more bullish view, albeit – one presumes – with tongue firmly in cheek. “We’ll finish top of the league and then we’ll go into the Premiership,” he says. “I had dinner with Saracens’ Nigel Wray last week and warned him that he’ll be losing sleep over us!” Now that would be one hell of a story.

Story by Ryan Herman

Pictures by  Ben McDade

This extract was taken from issue 22 of Rugby.
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