UWE Bristol’s American Football team have enjoyed a good start to the season after winning three of their first four games. After a loss on the opening day of the season away at Birmingham, the Bullets have really found their stride. This weekend, they welcomed the University of Hertfordshire who they’ve already beaten once this season.
The second training session of the week in preparation took place under the floodlights at Hillside Gardens where the squad spent two hours practicing drills ahead of what was set to be a huge game for the team.
UWE Bullets head coach Daniel Maher took some time to speak with us after the session.
“The season’s gone well so far, we lost our first game but I just put that down to inexperience, since then we’ve been on the up. We’ve got scholarship players, lots of recruits who are new to the team and I think that played a big part in losing the first game. This is the first year we’ve been in the premiership so we’ve had a scholarship budget to recruit players in.”
Dan talks about his journey to becoming UWE Bullets head coach,
“This is year five as a head coach here. I went out to university in America, and then I got a full-time job over at SGS College, as an academy football coach.”
Following the reverse fixture which saw the UWE Bullets beat Hertfordshire away from home, Dan said, “I’m really confident; our Quarterback wasn’t able to make the first game so we scraped together an offence and still managed to come away from it with a win so I’m looking forward to playing them here with our Quarterback available”.
UWE Bristol’s final two games of the American Football season are home and away to Swansea who currently sit at the top of the table, “I’m confident we can beat Swansea, we’re definitely the strongest team in the South so I’m feeling really confident.”
UWE Bristol will also be squaring off against local rivals Bristol University at the annual Varsity event with Maher confident of continuing their dominance over the opposition, “we’ve never lost to Bristol Uni who are in the second division but I’m really looking forward to it. It’s a lot of fun, a lot of people come to watch, a lot of alumni too”.
With UWE Bristol’s season on a high, The Bullets will be hoping for more of the same for the rest of the season as they look to push on towards the division title.
Update: Final score Sunday 27 January: UWE Bullets, 32 : University of Hertfordshire, 12