Image source, Shutterstock Image caption, Prop Sarah Bern won the World Cup with England in September By Bigger, better, faster, stronger....
Prop Sarah Bern won the World Cup with England in September
Bigger, better, faster, stronger.
It has only been five weeks since England lifted the World Cup trophy and prop Sarah Bern is already thinking about how she can improve now she has returned to her club Bristol.
Following such a massive career high at Twickenham, Bern might be forgiven for needing or wanting more time to find new motivation or just revelling in the achievement of being a world champion.
But for the tighthead, the opposite is true; the excitement of returning to her club has already got her thinking of driving herself harder towards the next goal.
"You go away, you do the hard work with England, you get the job done and you've got the chance to come back to a place and really focus it back on yourselves," Bern said.
"We had a big role with England and this was all about being a team and you were doing your role for the team and that was how we were going to win the World Cup.
"But it's nice to come back into the squad at Bristol and really focus on, 'OK what do we as individuals want to get better at?'.
"It's like a reset, ready to go again for the next cycle. I didn't mind it at all, I was excited to be back and try and achieve some new targets and go for bigger, better, stronger, faster."
Sarah Bern came off the bench for England during the World Cup final win against Canada
By Bern's own account, the weeks since the Red Roses were crowned world champions have been "wild".
"[I went from] winning the World Cup final, being on top of the world and then doing so many cool appearances or going to some cool events, and having some downtime to see friends and family - and then straight back into it in the rain at 9:00 pm on a Tuesday night and getting shouted at by the coaches," she said with a laugh.
While many of her team-mates have been in training since September, the 79-capped forward and her fellow England internationals only returned to the club in the past fortnight with some new faces in situe.
Former Scotland hooker Scott Lawson has come in as the Bears' new head coach, while Rhys Oakley has also joined as defensive coach from three-time PWR champions Gloucester-Hartpury.
The changes to the playbook have taken a little getting used to in such a short space of time, but Bern thinks in the long-run the team will be reaping the rewards.
"It's definitely been a challenge coming in and learning the new stuff pretty quickly," Bern said.
"It's going to be fun if we get it right, it'll be really great for us.
"Going through those moments where we have to learn really quickly it's actually all right in the end because if we get it right it will lead us to the top."
Bern feels "extremely confident" about how women's rugby can keep growing off the back of the World Cup, which produced record viewing figures for the tournament.
There is also growing talk about the proposed new R360 league with reports that a number of her England team-mates have already signed pre-contract agreements.
"Any opportunity for female players to get paid equally is always great even along those lines but at the minute I don't know too much about it to be able to comment on it," said Bern, who signed a new Bristol contract of undisclosed length in March.
"You've got to continually think about the growth of the women's game - as long as it's good for women, let's see how that goes."
For the time being Bern's focus is fully on Bristol.
Their 74-0, 12-try thrashing away at Leicester last Sunday started Lawson's reign on a high, with Bern coming off the bench for the final 30 minutes.
Next weekend they host Saracens in what she thinks will be a much sterner challenge.
Bristol have reached the PWR semi-finals three times before and in 2024 got to their first final. Winning the league title still remains elusive though.
"Definitely confident in the Bears and the Bristol way so I'm excited to see how we do for the rest of the season," Bern added.
