Bristol City head coach Lauren Smith says that the club are really proud of the huge support that they’ve attracted to Ashton Gate this season.
The Robins attracted a record home attendance of 12,008 for their recent fixture against Arsenal. The club are now poised to set another attendance record when Manchester United are the visitors to BS3 on Sunday.
When speaking to the media ahead of the Manchester United fixture, Bristol City head coach Smith said that the huge home crowds have left the club feeling extremely proud.
“It’s really inspiring,” Smith said. “When you look at the growth of the game and the size of the crowds from outside, you say ‘that’s great’ but when you’re actually there in the WSL at Ashton Gate and it happens for you, it’s a huge proud moment for myself, the players and the club. It’s not us looking at what someone else is doing, it is happening for us.
“It’s really positive. I just want it to continue to grow and then hopefully, we can fill that stadium one day.”
Bristol City go into this weekend’s fixture bottom of the Barclays Women’s Super League table but The Robins have started well and they look to have a real chance of staying up. Smith said that survival is not the only target, the club want to perform well against the very best.
She said “Just wanting to stay up has never been the aim. We obviously want to stay up but we don’t want to just scrape through, we want to put games on against the big teams where they have to really scrap to get the goals like the Arsenal game.
“For me, it’s not just about staying up, it’s about making sure that we establish ourselves as a team that people have to work hard to beat and worry that they might actually lose something in the process. It happened at Everton where they flew out of the blocks but at the end of the game, we were in control. We’ve got belief and we just have to put that on the pitch.”
Bristol City’s Barclays Women’s Super League fixture against Manchester United kicks-off at 12.30pm on Sunday afternoon. Tickets remain on-sale and can be purchased by clicking here.
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