Bristol tap into class divide in bid to shock ‘posh’ rivals and title favourites Bath | Premiership

When the Rugby Football Union launched its rebrand of the Championship last month, Henry Pollock was put front and centre, made the poster boy by virtue of his five loan appearances for Bedford Blues. You can hardly blame the union for trying to capitalise on the hype but there are better examples of players who epitomise the strengths of the second tier.

None more so than James Williams, Bristol’s inside-centre who at 28 has taken the road less travelled to the Premiership semi-finals. Williams began his career at Birmingham Moseley in National League One before moving to Hartpury. He joined Worcester in 2018 but managed only one appearance, signed with Sale a year later and appeared just three times before Covid hit and was released by the Sharks.

Soon Williams found himself arranging a return to Hartpury, all the while juggling a job renovating flats in Bristol. For 18 months Williams would set off for Gloucester at 5am, be on the training field at 7am until 8.30am before dashing back to begin work an hour later. In the 2021-22 campaign, he finished as the Championship’s top points scorer and Pat Lam soon came calling.

“I actually, honestly, really enjoyed it,” says Williams. “They were busy days, obviously you were a bit knackered but it’s a testament to Hartpury and the programme they ran, it was very accommodating for the boys who worked. We had a few teachers in the squad and they had to leave at 8am so they’d shoot straight off. The rugby-work balance was pretty savage.

“The bottom line is that I love playing rugby. Even if I didn’t make it to the Premiership, I’d still be playing rugby at whatever level for as long as possible. I always thought I’d keep going until something comes along, my dad would always say the cream rises to the top.

“I’ve been doing a bit of coaching at Dings [Crusaders in Bristol] and they’re National One and there is some raw talent out there. Boys are actually class and you think ‘You could be a Premiership player’, but it’s just having the opportunity and having the coaches who put a bit of time into you. I say it to the academy boys who got released last year, you just have to play rugby and as long as you’re playing it and you’re enjoying it, you’re probably going to be playing quite well, so just keep going with it.”

Williams admits to suffering imposter syndrome when he joined Bristol, arriving in a changing room filled with the kind of superstars that was once the Bears’ calling card. In many ways, however, Williams typifies Bristol’s move away from big-spending galacticos. Having spent much of his career at fly-half, he slots in seamlessly outside AJ MacGinty and allows Benhard Janse van Rensburg to do his thing in the No 13 channel. It helps to have firepower such as Gabriel Ibitoye outside him but Williams has thrived at Ashton Gate since Bristol opted to reprise their swashbuckling approach towards the end of last season.

“When I first came into the changing room it was like, crikey, there are some big names around me and Pat has given me the responsibility to drive these boys,” he adds. “This year I feel like I’ve shaken that a little bit and people do listen to what I say. If I can be a solid seven or eight out of 10 most weeks then I know the rest of the boys will be going pretty well outside me if I can just be solid and make good decisions on the ball.”

Bristol sealed their semi-final trip to Bath on Friday night with a thumping win over Harlequins last Saturday. Results in April threatened to derail Bristol’s season but victory over Bath in Cardiff – albeit against a second string side – put the Bears back on track. They head to the Rec as underdogs but Lam has been quick to point out that since their promotion to the Premiership in 2018 they have won 11 of their 14 matches against their rivals.

Bristol have not sold their full allocation of tickets and Lam was quick to stoke the flames, suggesting that Bath’s “huge” ticket prices for a stadium with sub-par facilities was to blame. “Even my wife was keen to go and when I went to look at the tickets I said: ‘Love, you don’t want to get drenched in that rain’,” he said. And evidently the Bears are tapping into the class divide that separates these two cities, just 12 miles apart.

“It is honestly bred into Bristolians about the fact that Bath, down the road, is seen as an upper-class city and they’re seen as being quite posh is probably the word,” says Williams. “Bristolians are probably proud of the fact that they’re not like that, it’s a working-class city and again that is in the blood of the Bristolian lads. When you come to this club everyone understands early on that Bristol v Bath is a humongous fixture, not just for rugby but for the wider communities, in terms of what the cities represent. That definitely gets played on and you can see the passion within the boys, getting really emotional talking about it in the week and before the game.”