He grew up in Portsmouth with no club to call his own, fought cancer, left Bristol and came back. This weekend, away at Saracens, Joe Batley plays his 100th game for the Bears.
Joe Batley was never going to be a Bristol man by birth. He grew up in Portsmouth, a city with plenty of football and very little rugby. When he talks about his childhood, he doesn’t describe a club he supported from the terraces. He describes a gap where one should have been.
“Growing up we were part of Harlequins and then halfway through it changed to London Irish,” he says, “so we never really had a team that was ours.”
That might have left a young rugby player adrift. For Batley it just meant the game itself had to be enough. He tried football first and was honest about the result. “I was crap. Had two left feet and I’m right-footed, so that was tough.” He joined his local rugby club instead and, in his words, “just fell in love with it”.
Hampshire gave him a first taste of representative rugby, and a few familiar faces, Joe Marchant, who came through Winchester, was among his team-mates for the county. “I grew up playing with Joe for the Hampshire County,” Batley says. The route from there to the Premiership ran west, to what he calls “the West Country, where rugby’s a bit of a religion”.
This weekend, that journey reaches a landmark. Batley will win his 100th cap for Bristol Bears.
A dream that arrived in stages
It would be easy to assume a player who reaches a century has chased the number from the start. Batley says it wasn’t like that.
He arrived at Bristol at 20 with a simple ambition. “I didn’t really dream about a club per se, just wanted to play in the Premiership and wanted to play as high as I can.” The thought, as he remembers it, was simply to get on the pitch. “Let’s get as many games as possible.”
His expectations kept shifting as he got closer to them. Signing a professional contract at 18 felt like a finish line until he arrived there. “You realise that, okay, I’m a professional, but what I really wanted was to be on the pitch.” A Premiership debut followed, which he calls “great”, before the next target replaced it. “I want more than that. I want to be someone that people talk about.”
So for Batley, 100 games is a statement about trust more than longevity. “I feel 100 games shows that you have the trust of the coaches, of the boys, to go week in, week out and play.”
That trust has not come easily or on schedule. “I thought I was gonna get it the last two seasons, and I kept ending up injured, which was frustrating.” Reaching the milestone has meant waiting for it, and he is clear about the cost: “A number of years to get to this point, and a lot of sacrifice.”
Leaving, returning, and what he owes the city
Batley’s first spell at Bristol did not give him the playing time he wanted. “The first time I was here I didn’t have as many involvements on the pitch as I wanted,” he says. He moved away.
When the chance to return came, he took it without hesitation. “When the opportunity arose to come back, I was keen to try and chase down that hundred games.”
His reasons go well beyond rugby. His partner is Bristolian and their daughter was born in the city. “I very much feel a part of the community and the city.”
There is also something he feels he owes. When Batley was diagnosed with cancer, the supporters rallied around him, and the hospital looked after him and his family. The club, he says, was there for him throughout his illness. “I’ve always had a soft spot,” he says, “because of the way that the fans rallied around me.”
He has been open about what that did to his sense of obligation. “I always felt like, if I ever got the opportunity to come back, I would take it and hopefully repay the favour.” For a player who had not yet had the impact he wanted on the field, that gave his return a purpose. “I wanted to pay the club back and the city back as much as I could.”
Judged by what has happened on the pitch since, the repayment is under way.
The wall of fame
Bristol tend to mark a 100th game with a photograph in the team room, hung among the players who got there first. Batley is characteristically self-deprecating about it. Asked whether there is a bonus, a cap or a tie, he says it is “a lovely, nice big photo of myself in the team room. So everyone gets to look at this mug all the time, which will be great.”
He is taking the company seriously, though. “I’ll be up there with a lot of the boys who’ve come before me. A lot of them that I get to call friends.”
His new spot will sit next to captain Fitz Harding’s picture, and Batley has a concern. “I think his photo might be a tad bigger, so I’ll measure it afterwards.” There is another player to consider as well: his closest friend, Dan Thomas, whose best man he was. Batley expects to hang below him. “Which he won’t let me forget.”
The day will matter to the family too. His parents, Rob and Julia, are travelling to the game. “It’ll be nice to see them afterwards,” he says, before adding where he hopes the celebrations will happen. “Hopefully with a win, some ciders, which would be huge.”
Momentum, and the memory of last season
Bristol come into the weekend with two wins from two, and Batley is happy to explain why the start feels different. It isn’t a revolution. “The DNA of what makes Bristol Bears Bristol Bears is still there massively.”
What has changed is how they manage the match. “We’ve been a lot more clinical when we have the ball and a bit more pragmatic when we don’t.” The penalty counts have fallen, and the team is spending more time in the right half of the field. “Where we’re playing the game has been a lot further up the pitch than in our half, as previous years has happened.”
He credits the half-backs for steering that. “AJ’s been fantastic. Rands has been phenomenal.” He also gives the forwards their share of the credit, with a lineout and scrum that have given the backs a platform. “It’s been quite the full package.”
Asked whether the shift was planned in pre-season, he suggests it was more instinctive. “I don’t think it’s been spoken about too much.” Bristol, he says, have always prided themselves on attacking what they see, using their handling to break teams down. The tweak is a greater awareness of the space behind. “We probably neglect a little bit of the space in the backfield, and so we rely on our nine and 10 to put us in the right areas. If the ball comes to us, then we’re in shape to hurt a team. If not, then the ball gets kicked, we react and we chase.”
As a lock, Batley is happy to leave the kicking strategy to those in charge of it. “They don’t sort me with our lineouts, so I don’t talk to them about kicking. It’s all good for me.” His own part is clear. “I’ll just be a lock forward and just hit breakdowns and carry the ball when it gets given to me.”
There is something else driving the group. Last season began well and then fell away, and they have not forgotten. “We were disappointed how the end of last season went after a strong start, so we’re looking to right a lot of wrongs.”
He is wary of getting ahead of himself. “We’ve done that two times, and no one’s gonna remember that come the end of the season if we don’t back it up a third, fourth, fifth, sixth, and so on.”
Following Fitz
Much of that discipline comes from the captain. Harding has led Bristol for several years, and Batley has little doubt why. “It doesn’t take you too much to know why. Watching him on the pitch, what he puts his own body through, you wanna follow him, you wanna back him up.”
The captain has also grown into the role. “His voice has definitely grown the last few years, and he’s found his leadership style, which has been fantastic.” Batley adds that Harding is not carrying it alone. Genchi and Steve Luatua are in the group, along with AJ and Rands, and Batley says the leadership group “have been huge”. Harding, he says, “embodies that in the way that he plays”.
A place that has not been kind
The trip to Saracens is the biggest test of the three-game run. It is also a place where Batley has never won.
He doesn’t pretend it doesn’t register. “There is obviously motivation there. It has been something we’ve talked about and leaned on. I’ve never won there personally, so it’d be a great one to tick off.”
The wider picture is simple. A win would take the Bears into a short break before their Champions Cup tie with three wins from three. “Everyone chomping a bit to get back to the Prem afterwards,” he says. And if it comes off, the history lesson ends. “Then no one’s talking about how we’ve never won there.”
Tackle height and the new laws
Rugby’s attention is on the game’s rules at the moment, and Batley was asked for a player’s view of the changes World Rugby has announced to how the tackle will be refereed. His answer shows how a lock thinks about it.
“I don’t think too much changes to the player,” he says. “I always try and get my body in front to make a dominant collision. If I don’t do that, then it hurts the team.”
The change, he explains, simply raises the stakes on an existing habit. “If I don’t get my body in front and get a dominant collision, then there’s a risk that a card could get shown to me, which then obviously is gonna be a negative outcome anyway.” His response is to carry on as before. “For me it’s just gonna be keeping to my process, keeping tight on my technique and then getting a good outcome from there.”
Three targets
Batley has been careful to keep his ambitions in view. He has three. “I wanna play for England and I want to win the Premiership. So the three targets for me have been to play 100 games for Bristol, to win the Prem, and to get those England honours.”
The count stands at one. “At the moment I’ve got one out of the three, come this weekend, and it’ll be interesting to see how far I can go on that list for this year.”
He is not putting a timetable on the rest. “You reassess all the time.” For now, he is holding the focus on the day ahead. “I’m just gonna enjoy the day for what it is.”
The voice of the forwards
One more detail says something about him. Asked about the post-match media demands that come with a winning start, Batley says he enjoys them. “I always like talking rugby when I can. Just ask my missus, she hates it.” He adds that the chance to speak matters for players whose work often happens out of sight. “It gave a lot of us a voice that we don’t always get to have.”
That is probably the best way to read him. Batley doesn’t do glamour, and he doesn’t claim to be the star of the team. He is a lock who wants to carry well, tackle properly and be trusted. A hundred games in, he has turned that approach into a career, one that has crossed illness, injury, a spell away and a return.
The reward is a bigger photograph on a wall than he’d admit to wanting. The quieter prize is what he gets to do with the city that backed him when it counted.
“Whatever the result is, we’ll hopefully make a cherry cake,” he says of the day, “but this has been a number of years to get to this point.” Then comes the hope that would complete it. “Hopefully a big win, and then back on the bus for some ciders.”
