Bristol Bears Women
women's rugby union club of England
Bristol Bears Women, formerly Clifton Ladies RFC, then Bristol Ladies, is a women's rugby union team based in Bristol, England. They are a standalone, independent rugby club, running in partnership with the Bristol Bears (formerly Bristol Rugby) since becoming affiliated to them in 2008 and play their home matches at Dings RFC in the Premiership Women's Rugby.
History
Bristol Ladies were founded as Clifton Ladies RFC in 1984 for what was intended as a one-off match against Weston Hornets. They eventually made it into the Women's Premiership before being relegated. In 2002, they defeated Nottingham Medoc Casuals in the RFUW Rugby World National Cup Final at Franklin's Gardens in Northampton, Northamptonshire, which they won with thirteen international players in their side. They were the first club outside of the London clubs of Richmond Women, Saracens Women and Wasps Ladies to win the trophy. In 2007, they were promoted back into the Women's Premiership and played one more season as Clifton RFC. In 2008, Clifton became affiliated to Bristol Rugby, who then took over the running of the team from Clifton RFC. In 2012, they moved to Portway Rugby Development Centre from Dings Crusaders Rugby Football Club's ground that they were sharing with Dings Crusaders. This made them the first women's rugby club to own their own facilities.
Current squad
The Bristol Bears squad for the 2025–26 season is:
Notable players
At the 2017 Women's Rugby World Cup three Bristol Ladies players captained their national teams. Sarah Hunter, Carys Phillips and Claire Molloy captained England, Wales and Ireland respectively.
The public source identifies “Bristol Bears Women” as women's rugby union club of England. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Bristol, Bears and Women.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 27, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q17001271. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2008, 1984, 2002 and 2007.
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This entry incorporates text from “Bristol Bears Women” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.