Booy’s sure his Bears will thrive in new environment
BRISTOL’S planned new £10m training ground will underpin the club’s rise to the top echelon of domestic and European rugby, according to chairman Chris Booy.
The new facility, based at Abbots Leigh in the west of the city, will be ready in December 2019, by which time Booy expects Pat Lam’s side to be an established Premiership team. Booy, above right, told
The Rugby Paper: “We’ve got the planning permission and bought the site, so it’s just about getting the contracts sorted now and then we can really go.
“The joy is it’s close to Ashton Gate and only three minutes from where Bristol City train so there’ll be a lot of crossover there in terms of expertise and machinery.
“It’ll be one of the best training facilities in the country, vastly superior to what we have at Clifton, and it’s a serious statement that we’re doing things properly.”
Bristol’s last attempt at becoming a rugby superpower ended abjectly in 2016-17 when they were relegated from the Premiership having won just three matches.
Booy is confident there will be no repeat under Lam, whose track record includes leading unfashionable Connacht to the PRO12 title against all odds in 2016.
He said: “Pat did what he did at Connacht on half the budget he has now, but we’ll be at the salary cap and he’ll be competing with other sides on a level playing field.
“People talk about big names we’ve signed like Charles Piutau and John Afoa but we’ve signed some of the best players from the Championship as well and we’d like to think at least a couple of those could play for England with the right coaching and experience.
“Pat’s expertise is in building teams, with the emphasis on TEAM. It’s not all about big names, it’s about having the right people and we believe we’ve got that.”
Booy added: “Joe Public might think we’re going to struggle but we don’t think we are and we’ll see fans coming in good numbers. We had 14,000 for our last Championship game so we’ll aim for 18,000 next season and if we can get to 20,000, then great.
“With all the local derbies against Exeter, Bath, Gloucester and Worcester, if we can get into the upper end of the table we might even regularly exceed that.”
Bristol’s decision to market themselves as the ‘Bears’ has not gone down well with traditionalists, but Booy is defiant in outlining the club’s reasoning.
He explained: “Since the game went professional we have not done well. We’ve yo-yoed between the Premiership and the Championship three or four times, been close to bankruptcy three times and generally failed to compete with other big teams.
“But we’re confident we’re past all that and while we want to keep all our existing fans, we want younger fans to get behind us and fill Ashton Gate. Those younger people get the Bears rebranding and there’s real expectation around this club now.
“Two years ago when we came up everyone was talking about not being relegated – now everyone is asking whether we can make into the top six.”