By Duncan Wood
December 13 2002

Back row forward Matt Salter was kind enough to spare me a few minutes to chat ahead of the Swansea game this weekend. He chatted about last week's game, recent form and the return fixture on Sunday.

You've played a lot of rugby at both number eight and blindside. Which is your preferred position?

Well, to tell you the truth, I'm really a number 6. And now we've got so many number eights at the club, it's quite nice to play in a position where there are slightly fewer people!

I'm enjoying it at 6. It takes a but of the pressure off and I get to enjoy playing my own game.

Do you feel under pressure with Ross (Beattie) and Ben (Sturnham) back?

There's plenty of competition in the back row. At the beginning of the year, the competition was really between the guys who were here last year and obviously Ross.

Now Rhys (Oakley) is playing really well and has started the last 8 or 9 weeks so the pressure is coming from everywhere.

But that's how a strong squad should work. Teams at the top like Gloucester and Leicester, they've got big squads. It brings out the best in you I suppose, it's all good.

Swansea are back this weekend. Do you feel that you owe them something?

I think we dropped off in performance in some ways last week. It's down to the pressure we've been under in the league and trying to get off the bottom.

There have been a lot of pressure games and we've sort of performed in the Premiership and took our foot off the gas a bit against Swansea and treated it in the wrong way.

Not intentionally, but we didn't perform like we wanted to and they probably weren't as good a side as some of the teams we've played in the Premiership. We sort of relaxed a little bit and that's not acceptable. We'll go into Sunday with a different focus.

Were you surprised that they lasted the 80 minutes so well bearing in mind their recent lack of competitive matches?

Yeah, to a certain degree. We've been up and running during the period that they were out of action.

When we scored that try in the second half, we thought that that might change the game and they might fall by the wayside.

But they did a lot of kicking. It was quite a slow game. There were a lot of lineouts and scrums so they hung in there but, hopefully, this weekend will be a bit different.

What's left for Bristol to aim for this year? The Powergen Cup is in a week's time. Will you focus on one Cup?

It's hard when you've got the league and then you stop and you've got Europe and the cup up until Christmas and then you're back into the league.

Last year we ended up eighth but the season was quite a success because we got into Europe.

The way the Premiership is structured, there's always stuff to aim for. There are always ways of getting into Europe and you can never relax.

For us, the main competition is the league really. That's where we need to set out standards. Each year we seem to finish up around the same place.

With the squad we've got in place we should be looking to qualify for Europe by right and not via the back door like we did last year. We ought to look to get up to 4th or 5th place and then take it from there really.

What do you think has been the key to the recent improvement in form?

You could say that we've played the lower sides in the Premiership which doesn't make it easier but those are the sides that we've got to be aiming to beat.

We've worked on a lot of things. We've tightened up our defence quite considerably. I think we conceded 18 tries in the first 4 games and, apart from last weekend when we conceded 2, we'd only conceded 2 in the last few and one of those was a penalty. So, we've obviously tightened up that which has been a problem for us.

Also a few wins has given us a lot of confidence. We were always underperforming and we just needed that win to get us going.

Players are returning from injury, we've got Julian returning and Sheri's coming back. Ross is returning as well. There's a lot of competition in the side and a lot of confidence as well, in the guy you're playing alongside. It's good at the moment.

From a supporter's point of view, the away win at Bath was fantastic. You've been around for a few seasons, what did that mean to the squad?

We try to go out there with the attitude that it's just a game, it's 15 against 15. If you treat it with the hoodoo kind of thing, you get all mixed up in that. So, we treated it as just another game.

But, afterwards, you can feel the relief that it's been put to rest and the support was amazing.

I think the support at the Swansea game was even better last weekend. I thought Swansea were meant to be quite a passionate crowd but you couldn't even hear them.

The Bath thing was a turning point for us and it was good because they were just 1 place above us and it put us right up next to them. Also, you could tell from just talking to the supporters, how much it meant to them. And the singing in the bar afterwards, annoying all the Bath supporters! It was great.

Are you expecting anything different from Swansea this weekend?

I'm not sure if they will. It's very hard with the Welsh sides as they can be quite up and down. Look at Neath losing at Calvisano. You can never tell with the Welsh sides.

But they marked that game they played against us as a turning point in their season and getting that victory for them will mean that they come here believing that they can win and we need to go back to the league and to the Powergen Cup with a win.

We lost our way last week but it's so important that we don't go into the Sale game in 2 weeks time not on a winning streak. We need to beat Swansea and we need to beat Rotherham for a lot of reasons. That would take us into Sale very confident.