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Ilona Maher’s first day at Bristol: ‘Everyone’s giddy and rightly so’
“It’s exciting. I’m excited about it, and I think the fans will be excited to watch it as well,” Bristol Bears head coach Dave Ward beamed as he addressed the media for the first time since the signing of Ilona Maher was announced.
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USA sevens star Maher, rugby’s most-followed player on social media, signed a three-month deal on Monday evening and a little over 18 hours later, the smile hadn’t left Ward’s face.
“I think she’s going to shock people when she plays 15s,” the coach added. “I think she’s going to be devastating. I really do.
“You think about someone with the pace of Abby Dow, with the size of Abbie Ward, with the step of somebody else called Abbie, I think you’ve got a fantastic rugby player there.”
Ward admits the days and weeks leading up to Maher being pictured at Ashton Gate in Bears kit have been a whirlwind. “Chaos would be a good word,” he joked.
It was Bears assistant coach, Tom Luke who first raised the possibility of a move for Maher, who was one of her country’s standout performers as USA claimed the bronze medal at Paris 2024.
That was her second appearance at the Olympic Games, but despite being a star of the shorter format – and having around eight million social media followers – making the move to England was far from a formality.
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Given that Maher’s only two Test caps had both been won in November 2021, she did not meet the criteria for an international visa to play for a Premiership Women’s Rugby club.
Ward admits their attempts to get Maher a visa were “knocked back a few times” but Bristol refused to give up.
Luke and Ward sought help from Bears men’s team manager Jack Targett and were ultimately aided by PWR and the Rugby Football Union, who provided “governing body endorsement” once the matter had gone to an appeal panel.
But, according to Ward, Luke was the “driving force” behind the signing. “I’ve never seen someone learn law and visa law so quickly, which was quite impressive,” the Bears boss said.
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“He said, ‘Wouldn’t it be great if we could try and get her involved at Bears? I think she’d be an amazing asset for us’.
“I knew he was serious. It was, ‘OK, then what happens next?’ I’d obviously heard a couple of other clubs as well before this had even happened had tried to speak to her, so I knew it was on people’s radar. I just didn’t know how far they had got along with it.
“So, we went straight away into investigation mode. How are we going to contact her? Because she doesn’t follow me or Tom Luke on Instagram!
“So, all those little bits, we had to try and join the dots to find out, one, how we were going to initially contact her. And then, two, is she interested and so forth. So that’s kind of where it went.
“And then, we did a lot of reading, a lot of looking up, a lot of speaking to people, talking to Jack Targett in the men’s group. Obviously, he’s done a lot of visa applications for the men’s team.
“Lots of people pulling together to work out the best case that we could put forward to our initial visa application, that was rejected, to then obviously go again and bring a panel together.”
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The initial signs suggest all that hard work has been worth it. Maher met with her new team-mates for the first time on Monday and although the initial plan was just for her to get acclimatised, she took full part in the session.
“She was flying around, she’s in great condition,” Ward said.
“Me and Tom weren’t shocked but we were a little bit because we were like, ‘OK, this is going to be a massive asset to our game, it’s going to show us a completely different dynamic wherever she plays’.”
Ward compared Maher’s passing in one drill to Phoebe Murray – “that’s the biggest compliment I can give her” – and he also revealed the squad had been fully behind the signing.
Certainly, England fly-half Holly Aitchison could not speak more highly of her new colleague.
“To be fair, I think everyone’s giddy and rightly so, she’s an icon, isn’t she? Like she’s bigger than this sport right now,” Aitchison said.
“I think we need those people in our game, so I think everyone’s been a little bit giddy, a little bit silly. And yeah, I think people are surprised by maybe how normal she is, and she just takes everything in her stride.
“It doesn’t feel like you’ve got a massive celebrity in the room… She’s obviously only been here like 12 hours so it’s probably not the most accurate reference but from what I gauge, she’s super cool and she’s super chill, so it’s been really good.”
Ward added: “First and foremost, she’s a fantastic rugby player. A really, really good rugby player, who [has] a huge desire to play 15s.
“She wants to play in the World Cup, I firmly believe that the PWR is the best league in the world. She’s going to play for one of the teams in the league, why not us? That’s kind of where we went with it.
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“Everyone knows about the social media following and that’s all well and good. I think from my perspective, we just saw a world-class rugby player who basically said, ‘I want to come and play 15s, where’s the best league and hopefully the best programme?’
“That’s what we wanted to represent.”
Many of the questions around the move have centred on where Maher will line up during her short stay in PWR.
Ward, who revealed he had spoken to USA head coach Sione Fukofuka during the process, suggested Maher would be eased into the team on the wing before a potential move into the centres or back row.
He also raised the possibility of using the American as a ‘hybrid’ option from the bench, given Fukofuka is keen for her to learn some tricks of the forward trade, such as being lifted.
Ward said: “For her development, she’s really open to that and she wants to handle the ball as much as possible and if that means you put her at number eight or even at six as that second ball-carrying option, I think that’s going to be devastating for any team, whether it be us or USA.
“So, [Fukofuka] wants her [to develop] that all-round skill set. We’ll give her that opportunity when she’s here.
“Obviously at the moment this week we won’t get too much done but when she’s actually here for real I suppose there’ll be a big opportunity to upskill her in loads of those areas.
“And then you might see that hybrid off the bench where we either bring her on in the back row or the backs. Obviously, I’m going a little bit in front now, but it’s quite exciting.
“I know obviously we’ve seen, Kate Zackary do that, we’ve seen other players do that, especially in the women’s game. So, nothing’s really off the cards.”
While the mood around Bears has been jubilant so far this week, Ward knows that he must ensure his players remain focused on the challenge that awaits at Ashton Gate this Saturday.
Bristol head into the match against Exeter on the back of a morale-boosting win at back-to-back champions Gloucester-Hartpury but Chiefs are unbeaten in seven matches this season and sit eight points above their hosts in the table.
Bears’ two defeats, meanwhile, have both come at home.
“It’s huge, isn’t it?” Ward said when asked if he needed to ensure the hype around Maher’s signing did not overshadow preparations for Exeter. “We saw that probably last week with Harlequins men and the Joe Marler situation.
“Everyone wanted to show Joe a massive send-off of an amazing career and they end up probably not showing up on the night. And we can’t fall into that trap.
“I’ll be using that example in training because I know the girls are focused, they want to win, we want to put on a show for our home fans, which we haven’t really done this season by hook or by crook, and it’s a huge opportunity for us to do that Saturday against an angry Exeter Chiefs team.”
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