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'Really love the ambition': Bristol fans react to Springboks visit
By Liam Heagney
Bristol fans have been singing the praises of their Bears after it was confirmed on Tuesday morning that Ashton Gate will play host to the Springboks in November, the first time since 2009 that the South Africans have arranged a match versus a Gallagher Premiership club.
Arriving in England as the 2007 World Cup holders, the Springboks were defeated by Leicester and Saracens during their midweek tour matches 13 years ago and they will now visit Bristol as the current World Cup champions having won the trophy again in 2019.
Representative fixtures are a rarity for Bristol as tour games in England before the dawn of professionalism were usually against county or regional selections.
Having taken on a Canadian team in 1903, Bristol hosted the original All Blacks two years later and then had to wait 80 years before taking on Zimbabwe three times in 1983, twice on a close-season tour and once at the Memorial Ground.
Bristol’s two most recent games against visiting countries were in 1997 when they defeated Tonga 35-15 and in 2003 when they beat the USA 31-21. Now, 19 years later, Bristol will host the Springboks and news of the fixture has been warmly received with tickets already on sale to season ticket holders.
“I really, really love the ambition and outside-the-box thinking of @BristolBears (and @BristolBearsW!). They're properly restless when it comes to improving offerings and driving change. Boks at Ashton Gate? Sign me up,” wrote one fan.
Another tweeted: “£25 to sit with the rabble in the South stand is a bargain to watch an international team.”
The Springboks, whose team will be titled SA Select XV, are looking to add two more midweek games to a Test schedule that sees them play Ireland, France, Italy and England on successive November weekends.
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Latest Comments
Turn it up. Give me your john A game would ya!
Go to commentsI didn't really get the should tone from it, but maybe because I was just reading it as my own thoughts.
What I read it as was examples of how they played well enough in every game to be able to win it.
Yeah I dunno if Ben wouldn't see it that way (someone else would for sure need to point it out to him though), I'm more in the Ben not appreciating that those close losses werent one off scenarios camp. Sure you can look at dubious decisions causing them to have to play with 14 or 13 men at the death as viable reasons but even in the games they won without such difficulties they made a real struggle of it (compared to how good some of their first half play was). This kind of article where you trying to point out the 3 losses really would most likely have been wins only really makes sense/works when your other performances make those 3 games (or endings) stand out.
There might have been a sentence here and there to ensure some good comment numbers but when he's signing off the article by saying things like ..
and..
I don't really see it. Always making sure people are upto date with the SH standing/perspective! NZ went through some tough times with so many different perspectives and reasons why, but then it was.. amusing how.. behind everyone was once they turned a corner. More of these 'unfortunate' results returned against SA and France at the start of the RWC which made it extra tasty to catch other teams out when they did bring it. So that created some 'conscious' perspective that I just kept going and sharing re thoughts on similar predicaments of other teams, I had been really confident that Wallabies displays vs NZ were real, that the Argentines can backup their thing against Aus and SA (and so obviously the rest), and current one is that England are actually consistent and improving with their attack (which everyone should get onboard with), and I'm expecting a more dominant display against Japan (even though they should have more of their experienced internationals for this one) that highlights further growth from July. 👍
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