Energetic thinking urgently required

CRITICAL supporters of Bristol in the late amateur era believed their team was being straitjacketed by a rigidly traditional committee structure driven primarily by the pursuit of a better yesterday.

- CHRIS HEWETT

This was only half-right. The Memorial Ground was not a complete desert when it came to progressive thought, but the hierarchy’s willingness to push the envelope was rarely matched by a functioning sense of direction.

For instance, the appointment of a director of coaching in the early 1990s – very trendy back then – would have landed better had the club not forgotten to provide him with an office. Then there was the cosmopolitan capture of a lightning-quick French wing who was fast-tracked into a job that involved him working shifts on Saturday afternoons. Corrective action was speedily taken, but it is human nature to remember the funny bit.

Things are very different now. The first and only top-flight English rugby club to make a proper fist of the single-owner, single-stadium, multicode, multi-team model that has long sustained professional sport in more enlightened parts of the world, Bristol now find themselves at the centre of today’s thinking about the union game and its direction of travel.