Interview with Shoguns skipper, Jason Little

Jason Little
By Duncan Wood
May 29 2002

At the Bristol Shoguns media day, Jason Little was besieged as usual by the press. Despite his popularity with the media, he was still kind enough to field a few of my questions about the season in general.

You've played more games than anyone this season apart from Alex Brown. How are you bearing up?

(Laughs.) No it has been tough, very tough physically. Mentally, I've really enjoyed it but the physical side is a bit hard particularly when you're getting a bit old! But the last three months especially, it's been very exciting for everyone so you get your enthusiasm from how we've been playing and you keep going.

What's your overall assessment of the season?

If you could segment the season, we started reasonably well and mid season was really disappointing but, the way we finished, I could never have expected that we could play football as good as the way we did. The way we beat the sides we did and the way we performed consistently well. Earlier in the season we'd have a good game then a poor one and then a good one again. We've finished consistently well even though we've lost a couple of narrow ones.

I saw a stat recently which said that 80% of the Bristol tries have been scored by the backs. That's got to give you some pleasure?

Well that's a good indication of how poor the forwards have been (laughs) Only kidding fellas! No, we've really played some great football this year and we've got some exciting players. As a unit we've developed. We've always had good individual runners and now we're starting to put people through holes and we're maybe being a but less selfish and a bit more team focussed. That's been an achievement.

What's been your highlight of the season?

Without doubt the Leicester win at Welford Road. Also to go back to the Saracens away game when we had a very young, very inexperienced team and to control the game as we did and to win it was fantastic. That took us to a new level where we'd not been before. We'd always gone close but lost those games by doing something silly. But here we were smart and streetwise. We controlled the game in difficult circumstances and the young players showed a certain maturity.

This year has been a year of development for us and we've come a long way down the road from the start of the season. It's been phenomenal.

What have you learned from the recent game against Northampton?

Just the style of play that they have and the way that they go about things. They're very physical up front and they put a lot of pressure on inside backs. Their pick and drive game is very good probably the best in the league so we realise know what we're up against. Hopefully, we can counteract that. Me, I'm looking forward to it as last time we played them it was 2 days after we'd beaten Leicester at home. This time there are no excuses. We're fresh and hopefully we've got a few guys back from injury. If we can't win on Saturday then I don't think we're worthy of being in the Heineken Cup.

Any message for the supporters ahead of Saturday?

Bring a couple of friends (laughs). No, this weekend is a reward and I don't just mean for Malcolm Pearce and for everything he's done for the club financially and the way he's supported the team. This is also for the supporters. It hasn't been a smooth ride, it's been up and down. It's been emotional, it's been exciting. We're an attacking side and we score a lot of tries.

The loyalty of some of the supporters is really tremendous. We have a hard core of people who travel with us wherever we go, week in and week out. We've actually become good friends with them. There's not that wall up there that there is with other clubs. They're really nice people that you want to do well for. Shorty epitomises the player/ supporter friendship I guess. There's a bond that's unique to Bristol.