BRISTOL, England — U.S. rugby star Ilona Maher made her debut for the Bristol Bears women’s team in entrance of a report dwelling crowd of 9,240 followers on Sunday.
But Maher, “the most followed rugby player on the planet,” couldn’t stop Bristol from dropping 40-17 to defending champion Gloucester-Hartpury in a Premiership Women’s Rugby match.
She got here on instead within the 61st minute at Ashton Gate with Bristol trailing 28-10. Maher made her presence felt in a few rucks and seemed for work off the wing however may make little affect to the general image in her 20 minutes on the sector.
The earlier attendance report for a Bristol girls’s dwelling match was 4,101 in opposition to Harlequins in May 2022. Such was the anticipation surrounding Maher’s debut that Bristol relocated the match from a smaller venue to Ashton Gate to fulfill demand for seats.
The 28-year-old Maher, who helped lead the U.S. to the bronze medal in rugby sevens on the Paris Games, has signed a three-month contract with Bristol in southwestern England. She had begun coaching with Bristol in December when the group introduced the signing earlier than going again to the United States for the vacations.
Maher has greater than 8 million followers mixed on Instagram and TikTok. She was a runner-up on the “Dancing With The Stars” TV present.
The Vermont native is returning to the 15-a-side sport in hopes of boosting her probabilities of making the U.S. group for the 2025 Rugby World Cup in England. She can play at wing or middle.
Bristol additionally mentioned the attendance was a report for a stand-alone sport within the Premiership. League-leading Harlequins mentioned they set a girls’s membership rugby report for attendance on Dec. 28 when 18,055 followers watched the group beat Leicester Tigers 42-17 at Twickenham Stadium. That was not a stand-alone match; it was a part of a doubleheader with the Harlequins males’s group.
