GLORY DAYS – Bristol Bears 25-26 Preview

The mantra of Bristol Bears is to entertain. Period. And under new head coach, Scott Lawson, plus Bears and Red Roses stalwart Abbie Ward, they’re determined to follow in the footsteps of the Lionesses.

The Bears are aiming for absolutely no drop-off in the excitement and enthusiasm for the game at club level in their pursuit of more glory days.

Both Scott Lawson and Abbie Ward spoke to Helen M Jerome ahead of their season starting, after a “bye week” on the opening weekend.  

Scott, I wondered last weekend when you were sitting on your hands, how it felt when you watched everyone else play. You and your team must be chomping on the bit.

Yes, it’s strange to get your bye week on round one.

But it was a good opportunity for myself – being new to the league – to watch the other teams, to see the World Cup players reintegrate, and just to get a real feel for the league itself.

It’s been good for us, an advantage, I suppose. An extra week of prep time, to allow that week of integration, from the Red Roses [including Sarah Bern, Hannah Botterman and Lark Atkin-Davis, above) plus the Welsh and the Scots who have been at the World Cup.

So yeah, we’re really keen. It’s probably made us more enthusiastic to get going this week.

What are your expectations and goals for the season ahead?

First and foremost it’s about for me coming in just getting to know the group, building the squad, really buying into Bristol Bears.

So that was my first goal that allowed me to do that during the Cup period.

But I think the excitement over the league is with the World Cup, with the recruitment… And it’s into the unknown, isn’t it? Nobody really knows where the other squads are.

So initially, I’m going to concentrate on this first block of games.

For the first four rounds… get the squad together, then I think we’ll know more in four weeks. I want us to be competitive in every single fixture we play. If we do that we’ll go and win games.

The nature of the World Cup, the competitive nature, the buzz round the women’s game, well, we want games to be competitive and then we have that inner belief in ourselves to know how we’re going to play and how we’re going to perform.

There’s now this next meaty block of games. Are you the sort of person that plans your squad for the block or are you a game by game sort of coach?

No, I think you plan your squad by the season, by the block. Like by the week you have to be reactive on that.

The one thing for me is like making sure off the back of a World Cup that you’re really forward thinking with who plays and when to try and get the most out of the squad.

I think this is the biggest year in women’s rugby from a duration, from a volume point of view.

So there’s work done across the whole squad. We’ve obviously got some world class, world cup winning players in our squad.

We’ve got seasoned internationals, and youths who have taken their opportunity during the cup.

So how we create that blend and build a squad over this first block especially will be really important and it’ll determine how we go for the rest of the season as well.

As your season kicks off, how do you break down a team like Leicester Tigers?

Obviously they played last week, so we’ve got some footage on that.

The big thing for us, is to fully focus on our performance this week.

I don’t think there’s enough evidence or strategic footage if you want to adapt to what they do.

I’ll very much as a coach focus on what we can do, what we can control.

So I’m just looking forward to getting the squad out on grass.

Like you say, last week was sort of chomping at the bit and the players will be more so than me.

So let’s like focus on what we’ve worked on over the cup period. What we’ve worked on over the last couple of weeks and yeah, we’ll go and play our brand of rugby.

So, Abbie Ward, a lot of people fell in love with rugby during the World Cup. And I wonder why people who loved that should come to the PWR – and particularly come to see Bristol Bears?

Well for one, you get to see up close and personal all these players that you’ve maybe been watching on your TV screen. Or if you’ve been lucky enough to get to one of the games over the World Cup, you get to see them on the pitch.

I think what’s exciting – and we had a bye week this weekend – you’re watching players who were playing alongside each other up against each other.

So you’re seeing those challenges, you’re seeing the likes of Maud Muir against Kelsey Clifford, whatever matchup… for me, that’s exciting.She’s quite raw and definitely someone that you can start to probably see a lot of as she starts to break through the system.

Throw into the mix, obviously, all your Welsh, Scottish, Canadian, USA contingent.

I think the PWR is the best league in the world. We have the best players in the world playing in it.

I think as an event to come to, our Bristol Bears games are so family-friendly. There’s so much energy around. It’s just a great day out.

And there’s the increased possibility of interacting with the players. We always want to thank our fans and speak to them after.

It’s an opportunity to get down, see the players that have been playing on the world stage, but at your local club!

Bristol Bears travel to Leicester Tigers for the 13.00 kickoff on November 2nd. Get down to the game or watch live on YouTube.