Cumbria have made a couple of changes for Saturday’s final County Championship group game at Nuneaton against Warwickshire.
Arran Pamphilon, of Penrith, will start in the centre with Ryan Scott, of Aspatria, moving to the replacement bench.
There’s a change, too, in the second row where Matt Tindal, a former Workington forward now with Firwood Waterloo comes in for Greg Wrathall, of Kendal, who is unavailable
Tindall, who went through the age groups at the Zebras before moving to university played in the first game against Staffordshire, called up at the last minute but was unavailable last week.
Cumbria go into the game on the back of an excellent 21-17 win at Carlisle against East Midlands, while Warwickshire have lost both games against Staffordshire and East Midlands.
It’s not straight-forward, with scoring differential possibly going to decide it, but Cumbria need to win handsomely in Nuneaton and hope that East Midlands can edge a low-scoring game at home to Staffordshire.
Cumbria could have been without replacement hooker, and former skipper Matty Houghton, who was sent-off against East Midlands.
But through the efforts of Kevin O’Neill, chairman of Club Cumbria, an RFU Disciplinary meeting through Zoom was held last night and in the end it was ruled Houghton had no case to answer.
Fortunately Cumbria were able to hold on for the win playing for more than 40 minutes with 14 men – and an hour with 13 because of two yellow cards – and give themselves a chance of qualifying for the knock-out stage.
The Cumbria squad will be staying overnight ahead of the game and O’Neill said: “At least we are not just going for a game of rugby, we are going there with a chance of qualifying and after going all the way last time to Twickenham we want to sample it again.”
The Cumbria team is: Jamie McNaughton (Penrith), Ben Dixon (Kendal), James Coulton (Kirkby Lonsdale), Arran Pamphilon (Penrith), Harry Huddleston (Kirkby Lonsdale), Glen Weightman (Kendal), James Telford (Carlisle), Arran Sullivan (Whitehaven), Tom Graham (Carlisle, captain), Mark Irving (Sandbach), Matt Tindall (Firwood Waterloo), Reece Tomlinson (Kendal), Peter Weightman (Barnes), Sam Wilson (Cockermouth), Sam Farrer (Chester). Replacements: Glenn Chesher (Kendal), Adam Howe (Penrith), Robbie Collinson (Kendal), Dan Sharrock (Kendal), Ryan Scott (Aspatria), Steven Nelson (Kendal), Matty Houghton (Kendal).
