logo
Bath have 'hunger' to win three trophies in 2025

Bath have 'hunger' to win three trophies in 2025

Yahoo06-03-2025

Bath have a "hunger" to win three trophies this season says assistant coach Andy Robinson ahead of the team's Premiership Rugby Cup semi-final.
The Premiership leaders travel to Newcastle on Friday, looking to book a place in their first cup final of the campaign.
Bath are also still in European competition having exited the Champions Cup in January but dropped into the Challenge Cup, which returns next month.
"There's a hunger but there's an understanding of what the process is and an understanding that yes, that's our goal, and it's a goal to win three trophies still and to make sure that we keep winning," Robinson told BBC Points West.
"That's the goal but it's about the performance."
Bath have never progressed this far in the Premiership Rugby Cup before and only lost one of their six games in the pool stages of the competition to reach to the knockout stage top of their group.
They beat Harlequins 39-28 in the quarter-final last Friday.
Robinson said he valued that the players are focussed entirely on their next performance rather than thinking further ahead.
"You've got to get through Friday and you've got to win this game. In the end, you only get your hands on the trophy after winning two games from now," Robinson said.
"It's about understanding how to win this week. If we're lucky enough to do that it's about how we go and perform next week," he said.
"I never really thought about winning trophies ever as a player, it was all about the next performance and that's what I like about this group, it's all about the next performance."
Reaching final would give Newcastle 'ray of hope'
Bath captain Spencer signs new three-year deal
Bath have used the competition to field a large number of players from their academy, blended with first-team players.
Back row Arthur Green, who is on Bath's senior academy, has featured in all their games in the competition.
The 21-year-old said the team have had the mindset of winning the tournament from the start.
"Before we had our group stages Kieran Verden our tight-head prop said we want to win this competition from the outset," Green said.
"Going into every day's training with that mindset that we do want to win this competition means hopefully we can get the result on Friday night and come back in on Monday and look towards the final."

Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

‘We took a big leap of faith': how a community project built Arsenal Women
‘We took a big leap of faith': how a community project built Arsenal Women

Yahoo

time40 minutes ago

  • Yahoo

‘We took a big leap of faith': how a community project built Arsenal Women

It is 40 years since the establishment of Arsenal in the Community, the wing of the club responsible for founding the women's team, and the announcement that all the side's Women's Super League games will be played at the Emirates Stadium next season returns the team to the N5 community that birthed it. With the players ending an 18-year wait for a second European title by beating Barcelona in the Champions League final in May, it has been a year of full-circle moments for Arsenal. Advertisement Bringing all league games to the Emirates Stadium 'is another step in driving towards the best conditions for our players to be able to perform at their best and towards one of our main objectives, which is to win trophies', says Arsenal's director of women's football, Clare Wheatley. 'We also just felt that a connection back to where we began, back to our roots, was warranted.' Sitting in the sun in the playground of Haverstock School, with an Arsenal in the Community girls' football session taking place in the background, Arsenal's head of community, Freddie Hudson, tells the story of the birth of the women's team. 'The roots of Arsenal women are firmly connected to a community programme back in the late 1980s, when there was just no access or structured opportunity for girls and women to play football,' says Hudson, part of the community scheme for 37 years. 'You couldn't go to a local provision as a young girl and take part in any football activities. We recognised that and we thought that was wrong, so we began to run girls' football programmes in schools, after the school day and during holidays, and what we found was that those girls were as talented as the boys, and that was with huge barriers and challenges around them and without any football role models they could look up to.' Advertisement The decision to engage further with those girls grew from this. 'If they wanted to model a football technique or a skill, they'd have to look to professional men players and that just didn't sit right with the football club,' Hudson says. 'So we took those girls' football programmes and the passion, commitment, togetherness, belonging and loyalty that those girls were showing, which was just so powerful, and took a big leap of faith. We developed a youth training scheme for 16- to-18-year-olds with the aim of mirroring what the boys had in terms of a pathway. 'There was no route into professional football for women but at least we could get to the point where they had a YTS scheme as an option. So they were full-time with us from 16 to 18 and were paid for by a government training scheme. The bulk of their time they were being coached as players, but then they gained lots of sports qualifications and gained experience in the JVC Centre at Arsenal in a sort of leisure centre environment. So we were equipping them with work skills and more. That was just such a powerful programme and all of a sudden that attracted players like Rachel Yankey.' The club would help senior players find jobs in the club too, Alex Scott famously washing the men's team kits in her early days there. The landscape is very different today but Arsenal are still doing that base-level community work. One of the coaches working with the girls at Haverstock School, Abby Webster, is a former pupil. 'As soon as I hit 18 I was able to get a job in the community,' she says. 'I've been out to other places to get some more experience but then I've always come back here; this has always been where my heart stays.' Advertisement Bella, Myah, Kayla and Stevie step away from the session, faces red, to talk about its impact. 'We're closer now,' says Bella. Abby, says Stevie, is 'less like a coach and more like a person that you can go and talk to. She's more like a cool, younger person, like a cousin or something.' All four have been taking part since the sessions began, having previously had only the inter-form cup available for matches. They love the sessions and have loved being taken on trips too, including to the Arsenal Hub, the centre of Arsenal in the Community. 'We've met Declan [Rice],' says Myah. 'We got signed shirts, the new shirts,' Kayla says. When Arsenal in the Community was launched in 1985, it was a way to give back to locals facing disruption on match days and engage with a generation of young people 'that we felt they weren't being listened to', says Hudson, who was awarded an MBE last Friday for services to Arsenal's community. 'Unemployment was high, there was some racial tension in the city and we wanted to engage those young people.' Many of those challenges exist today. 'The riots in the 80s and 90s were kind of replicated in 2011,' Hudson says. 'Society was in a pretty bad place back then and the challenges nowadays are similar, though there are some differences and different nuances. Unemployment is still a real challenge for certain young people that haven't had any decent role modelling around education and work pathways.' Advertisement The community programme has also enabled Arsenal to assist local authorities with issues such as teenage pregnancies, sexually transmitted diseases, school attendance and punctuality, Hudson says. 'The beauty of the football club, though, is it's nimble,' he says. 'It's not a local authority, it's not an NHS, where there's levels of signoff you have to go through. We can be really responsive and with a bit of creativity and nimbleness and passion and commitment, all of a sudden you could be facing a challenge one day and the workforce could be out there with partners delivering on those challenges within a couple of weeks.' Arsenal want to ensure a route remains from their community work into the women's and girls' teams, alongside their talent ID programme and academy. 'We are also aware of barriers that are there for local girls to come through and have plans to reduce those,' Wheatley says. Those plans include moving some training to London and helping with the financial burdens that come with being a part of a team. Improving the diversity of the senior side is also an important driver behind the work done further down the chain. Wheatley is proud of Arsenal's diversity in the academy and says: 'We have strengthened the pathway between the academy and first team just to ensure that there is that progress.' The success of the first team and of individual players provides what Hudson describes as 'a golden opportunity that we can't let pass' at community level. 'All the success we've had in the 2022 Euros, with all the success that Arsenal women have had with 62 trophies, it's phenomenal,' he says. 'And we've got a great window to drive some female-focused messages, supporting those young girls through pinch points of anxiety in their lives, but not just with women and girls. We've got a great opportunity to take some of those conversations, some of that education, some of that awareness, to a male audience, and that's what we're doing too.'

US-owned Irish soccer club Drogheda barred from Conference League by UEFA ownership rules
US-owned Irish soccer club Drogheda barred from Conference League by UEFA ownership rules

San Francisco Chronicle​

time44 minutes ago

  • San Francisco Chronicle​

US-owned Irish soccer club Drogheda barred from Conference League by UEFA ownership rules

GENEVA (AP) — Irish Cup winner Drogheda lost its appeal on Monday against being removed from the Conference League next season for breaking UEFA rules when investors own multiple clubs. The Court of Arbitration for Sport said its judges gave an urgent decision dismissing Drogheda's appeal that was heard on Monday. On Tuesday, UEFA will start making the draws for qualifying rounds in the third-tier European competition. Drogheda and Silkeborg of Denmark qualified for the Conference League second preliminary round but are owned by the Trivela Group from the United States. UEFA rules to protect sporting integrity do not allow teams from a multi-club network to enter the same competition if one owner has 'decisive influence' over management of both. Drogheda apologized to fans in a statement for the situation leading to a decision that caused 'great heartbreak and disbelief' and will cost the club at least hundreds of thousands of euros (dollars) in UEFA prize money. The American-back club missed a March 1 deadline set by UEFA to anticipate a pending problem and make changes to the ownership or executive structure. CAS said the three judges agreed UEFA communicated key information which Drogheda 'knew or ought to have known about.' A 2-1 majority of the judges 'rejected (the club's) submissions on alleged unequal treatment by UEFA,' the court said. Other cases involving Manchester City, Manchester United, AC Milan, Brighton and Aston Villa in the past two years were resolved by one of the ownership stakes being placed into a blind trust for the season. A UEFA expert panel also imposed transfer bans and limited cooperation between clubs in question. The UEFA panel is also assessing if Crystal Palace and Lyon can both enter the next Europa League. Lyon's American owner John Textor has a 43% stake in Palace though with limited decision-making power. In the latest case, Silkeborg took priority with UEFA to get the Conference League place because it finished higher in the Danish league this season than Drogheda did in the Irish league last year. Drogheda loses prize money of 350,000 euros ($406,000) that UEFA pays for playing in the Conference League second qualifying round. 'We believe it is unjust. Rules should protect opportunity, not prevent it,' Drogheda said. "Nevertheless, we accept responsibility. And we're sorry.' ___

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into the world of global news and events? Download our app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store