‘It was tough to leave home, but I haven’t looked back’
Harry Thacker tells Charlie Morgan that Bristol’s open game suits him better than Leicester’s aggressive style
In some ways, it felt like a wrench for Harry Thacker to bid farewell to Leicester in the summer. Sure enough, he was back in the East Midlands just a few days ago, albeit briefly. Thacker and partner Charlotte brought their 11-week-old son Jackson to see the family, including father Troy – also a former Tigers hooker – and younger brother Charlie, a centre who is still part of Geordan Murphy’s squad.
They spent an “awesome” Christmas together. Welford Road and the surrounding area will always remain close to Thacker’s heart. Yet his move to join Pat Lam’s Bristol Bears already appears to have vindicated a hunch to fly the nest.
“It was a tough decision to leave my home, the club my old man played for, because of the emotional attachment,” says the 24-year-old.
“But when it came to rugby, it was a simple decision, really. I wasn’t really getting a lot of rugby, so I decided to give it one final crack [at Leicester], not last year, the year before.
“It didn’t quite work out the way I wanted it to and Pat was on the phone. He told me his vision for the club, he sold it to me and I moved down.
“I hadn’t left Leicester before and I was uprooting for the first time but, since then, I haven’t looked back. I’ve enjoyed every moment.”
The lifestyle suits Thacker, a keen surfer who counts a camping stove as his favourite Christmas present of 2018. Living in Portishead, he is a two-hour drive down the M5 from Cornwall. More regularly, he and other like-minded Bears – Jake Heenan, Tom Pincus, Luke Morahan and Nick Fenton-Wells – make the one-hour trip to the waves of South Wales.
In purely professional terms, Thacker is thriving as well. Lam’s enterprising tactical template relies on accurate ball movement – through the hands or with the boot – and dynamism. As for intuitive decisionmaking and technical ability, from fizzing passes to scavenging at the breakdown and running clever support lines, Thacker is as rounded as any player in the country.
“The common thread is that it doesn’t matter what number you have on your back,” he says, explaining Bristol’s blueprint. “Everyone from 1-15 should have a similar skill set. We’re very open and we want to give it a good crack. That’s how I like to play the game.”
Six tries, complementing link play in wide channels and plenty of defensive distributions, have punctuated Thacker’s nine Premiership matches in 2018-19 to date. Two of those scores arrived in a 41-10 thrashing of Leicester at the start of this month.
Thacker prefers to highlight the importance of the five points Bristol took from that win, but the grin that spread across his face after scurrying over with just 61 seconds on the clock spoke volumes.
As a Leicester player, it always felt as though Thacker’s relatively diminutive size stunted his efforts to cement a starting position, despite crowd-pleasing moments. He was even shifted to openside flanker every now and then. By contrast, Lam has allowed his exciting talents to flourish.
“The whole game plan at Bristol is about going around teams and going through teams,” Thacker adds. “At Leicester, and we had different coaches there, it was predominantly about winning collisions and getting over the gain-line.
“It was about running over people … and I’m far more likely to go under people than over people. The way we play here, I would say, suits me more.”
Lam understandably wants Thacker to hone set-piece basics, throwing and scrummaging, that make up a hooker’s remit. Against Newcastle Falcons’ imposing line-out jumpers this afternoon at Ashton Gate, such fundamentals will be under scrutiny. Defeat could drag the Bears, currently 10th, to second bottom in the table. However, fear of failure cramps Lam’s style. Bristol will remain committed to doing things their own way, and not just with innovative social-media video clips heralding contract renewals.
This week saw All Blacks backrower Steven Luatua and Samoa lock Chris Vui confirm they have signed long-term deals lasting two and three years respectively. The project is a long-term one. Last season’s promotion was just the start.
Thacker embodies the manner in which Bristol’s ambition has refreshed the Premiership and believes in what is being built.
“We’re not focusing on the table because it’s down to our performance,” he says. “We know that when we get it right, we can beat most teams.
“Whenever it’s not really worked out, it’s been down to our execution – passes not going to hand, people not working hard into the right places early enough – because we have a good system to break teams down from anywhere.”
‘We’re not focusing on the table because it’s down to [us]. We know that when we get it right, we can beat most teams’