Cubs will be crucial after cap reduction
The Bristol Bears academy manager, below, tells Adam Ellis about the club’s vision to bring homegrown talent through to take them to Champions Cup glory.
Your time at Bristol began two years ago, how frustrating was it to spend five months setting out your plans for the academy only for the pandemic to hit?
When you are coming into a new job it can be challenging, but in this case the vision and the culture at the club is so strong that you can get onto the track of things quickly. Everything I have learned was aimed at driving higher standards and raising expectations.We wanted to implement that last season, but we weren’t able to.
We have been able to make some good changes, certainly, within the senior set-up and with transition into the first-team, but the main block of changes we wanted to make have had to wait 12 months from what was originally planned. It is what it is, but this is a great club to be at because there is a clear vision and a strong leadership driving that on.
Alex Groves and Jack Bates started every game for England U20s in their Grand Slam campaign – Deago Bailey also played plenty of minutes – is their success a measure of the work done at Bristol?
The big thing for us is international rugby, whether at U18, U20 or senior, it is very important. To be an international doesn’t come overnight. Your whole being needs to be of that very high standard to give you that opportunity.
If our programme is better and keeps developing week by week, the by-product of that is going to be having international players within our squad.
We have to operate at an international standard ourselves to be able to fulfil the players’ ambitions of becoming Test players and our own as a club that wants to win the Champions Cup.
Look at any team that has won the Champions Cup or the Premiership and on numerous occasions they are littered with internationals. To have internationals within the academy who can bring success to the club further down the line, that is one of the changes we have made and a new focus for the academy.
Before we changed things, the academy side had won three games in eight years. That isn’t right.
Alex Groves took on a big role for England U20. Do you see a bright future in the Bristol second row?
We have been delighted with his progress and I speak regularly with (U20s coach) Alan Dickens on the phone. Anytime around a squad announcement, he would call me and be desperate to get Alex involved. He is so highly thought of.
What makes Alex so different from many other players is that it hasn’t been plain sailing for him. It has been a tough 12 months because he has received very honest feedback from the coaches at the club because we want to squeeze more out of him. He has taken it all on board and grown resilience. He is independent and emerged as one of the go-to players for England towards the end of the Six Nations. The transformation has been great to see.
These tough conversations with Alex, did he arrive from South Africa as quite a raw talent?
He was. He walked through the door with his big 6ft 8ins frame and was a great lineout technician as you would expect, but you know the way we play at Bristol and you have to be an allcourt player. Any forward has to be able to carry the ball effectively, pass the ball, and understand the game. There have been coaches who say ‘the lineout is a real strength of his’, but we had to have some honest conversations to get more from him around the field and in his work with the strength & conditioning department.
Early on, there were some chats with Pat (Lam, DoR) and some senior coaches and it was tough for him to buy into our vision of how he should be developed.
Who have been the coaches that have worked with Alex?
Jordan Crane and John Muldoon have been critical to his development. And Pat. Nothing happens in this place without Pat knowing about it. But it shouldn’t be underestimated how important our mentoring programme is at the club. The two we have are Joe Joyce and John Afoa, they are the chairmen of the mentoring group. Alex has come over from South Africa and moved into an academy house with four other guys. He is living in Bristol and hasn’t seen his parents in a number of months due to Covid, so he has had lots of challenges but he is emerging as someone who could do really well in the game.
Explain how expansive your recruitment range is when it comes to talent ID, because you have Colston’s and Clifton College on your doorstep but have also spotted Alex over in South Africa…
Paul Larkin has just come on as recruitment manager and his role is to co-ordinate all the information we have within the club. The network we have is pretty extensive and it is another example of how the club is trying to evolve to ensure we are efficient with our recruitment.
One of our key pillars is to develop homegrown players. There is no secret about our links with Colston’s, Clifton, SGS, Richard Huish in Taunton, Bristol Grammar etc. and we meet regularly with all the heads of rugby to discuss players and recruitment from within the area. Recruitment in the UK and overseas is very important because those networks feed into the overall framework and we are able to make decisions based on the type of player who can prosper here.
The RFU approved its Covid Recovery Plan last month. As part of that, from 2024-25 matchday-23s must comprise a minimum of 15 EQPs. Does that add pressure?
Yes, but there are so many players out there just waiting for their opportunity. We have to just go and find them. We then have to trust our coaching, and our system of care for these players. And to say to ourselves we can turn these guys into genuine contenders to have a long career in rugby.
PRL have reduced the salary cap to buy clubs some breathing room. Is that a positive for you in the academy or is it damaging?
It does place a greater emphasis on homegrown players because if you can develop your own players, it gives you more headroom on the cap. Regardless of what the salary cap was previously, the Lansdown family and Pat have three main pillars written all over the place at the club. They are: Champions Cup, developing England internationals, and homegrown players. They are inextricably linked and the homegrown aspect is something the Lansdown family want. It ties in with the salary cap and what Bristolians like to see. We want people in the area to be proud to be associated with Bears through their players.
“We want internationals in the academy to bring success to the club down the line”
Being a Welshman and the former chief of the WRU’s elite pathway, you must be pleased to see the likes of Josh Adams and Mat Protheroe heading back to regions in recent years?
I’m a Welshman born and bred, and my motivation is just to see guys enjoy their rugby. Those two guys you mentioned aren’t the only players to have been given offers over the Severn Bridge that they deemed better than the ones pledged by regions. They have gone away, improved and now headed back to Wales as great players.
My passion is working with young players with potential and seeing them develop to fulfil their dreams and aspirations. I have been doing this a long time now and seeing guys like Dan Biggar and Alun Wyn Jones doing what they are doing now, I was there at the start of their careers. And now I have more to look forward to with these Bristol players.