Prepared for new surface

Andy Pratt says his players will need to be ready to face a different sort of challenge when they travel to Bristol to face Dings on Saturday. The West Country side are the only club in National 2 South to play their home matches on an artificial grass surface. Canterbury will be making the first appearance at Shaftesbury Park and head of rugby Pratt says it will be interesting to see how the game pans out. He added: “It’s great to have Dings back in National 2 South (they were promoted last season) but they are a very different club to when we last went down there. “They play on an artificial grass pitch, but whether that gives them much of an advantage I’m not sure because these days most teams are able to jump on one at some time or another. “We’re lucky in that we’re able to train on a similar surface at the Simon Langton School so it won‘t come as a surprise to us. They’ll obviously be more used to it, but hopefully being a flat track it will suit us.” Canterbury went back to second in the table on Saturday when they beat Old Redcliffians 47-12 at the Marine Travel Ground. It was their 10th straight home win – eight of which have come this season – and the perfect way to respond to the defeat at Tonbridge in their last game of 2018. Pratt explained: “The main thing was I wanted a win and we got that but there were still some aspects of the performance that we could have improved on.”