Pat Lam hopes fans will be back at Ashton Gate for the Bristol Bears’ next home game after their midweek encounter with Northampton Saints on Tuesday.
The Bears director of rugby said he hopes to have fans back inside the club’s 27,000-seater stadium to provide the 16th man in the club’s European Challenge Cup final on Friday, September 18.
Fans were allowed into a stadium to watch live rugby in England for the first time last weekend since the Gallagher Premiership was suspended back in March due to the coronavirus shutdown; nearly 3,000 Harlequins supporters were at The Stoop on Saturday to watch their side go down 27-41to Bath Rugby.
While having fans in the ground did not help Harlequins get the result on Saturday, Lam, like everyone in rugby, is desperately keen to get supporters back into grounds as soon as possible.
He said: “I would love to have fans at the Dragons game for that quarter-final, That would be awesome.
“It is a big day for the club and for our community so that would be awesome and then hopefully we could follow it up with a semi-final as well.
“The sooner the better.
“We were hoping [to have fans in] for the Exeter game, we heard noises about, but the sooner the better.
“The stadium ticks all the boxes, we just need the greenlight to do it and it would be fantastic if it was for knockout rugby.”
The greenlight Lam is referring to of course would need to come from the government Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport which is in charge of allowing fans back into sporting events.
Saturday’s game at Harlequins was one of a number of pilot events and looks to have been highly successful
Lam said the specifics of who would get tickets, how that would work and the number of people allowed into the stadium were best left to others at the club to explain but said Bristol Bears would be looking to reward their “incredible season ticket holders.”
