How injury crisis made Bristol Bears strongerImage source, Getty ImagesImage caption, Wing Gabriel Ibitoye spent four months out after his injury just 52 minutes into Bristol’s first Prem game of the campaignBySophie HurcomBBC Sport England, WestPublished19 minutes agoBarely 80 minutes into the Prem season, Bristol Bears lost their first-choice scrum-half, fly-half and top-scoring wing to long-term injuries.
In the weeks and games that followed, the number of casualties increased.
At the worst of the injury crisis, Bristol had 15 backs unavailable and struggled to put a training session together.
Players were signed on short-term loans, academy players were thrown into matches and director of rugby Pat Lam conceded their odds of reaching the end-of-season play-offs had already shot up.
Fast forward to mid-March and the Bears are third in the table, having enjoyed one of their best-ever winters.
They return to Prem action on Sunday at Leicester, having won their past five league matches stretching back to the end of November, wiht victories in three out of four Champions Cup games in between.
“We all hear these statements about things you can’t control but it’s how you adapt and react to it,” Lam told BBC Sport.
“The best thing that happened to us after we lost those three boys [Harry Randall, Gabriel Ibitoye and AJ MacGinty] in round one was playing Saracens full strength – they gave us as spanking that day [scoring] 50 points.
“It made us realise, we changed a lot – we had to. We dropped layers of our game to get these fundamental things done really well and slowly built it back up.”
