Watch every second of Super Rugby Pacific live and on demand via Stan Sport.<\/a><\/p>\nThe 19-cap All Black will get his first look in the centres on Friday in the club\u2019s opening trial against the Queensland Reds, set to partner fellow international Kurtley Beale.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt’s an exciting change for me. When I first arrived, I sat down with \u2018Crono\u2019 [Force coach Simon Cron] and had a good yarn to him about it. We were actually both on the same page around that position change,” Bridge told the media.<\/p>\n
\u201cI’ve played the majority of my career on the wing, but it’s an exciting change. It’s been a good challenge for me learning the new role and whatnot, but I’m looking forward to getting out there and having a crack.<\/p>\n
\u201cI’ve been working quite hard and closely alongside [defence coach] Brad Harris around the way that we want to defend and have quite an attacking defence as well, so I’m looking forward to it. It’s a good new challenge for me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bridge brings a title-winning pedigree to the Force, who are desperate for their first finals appearance.<\/p>\n
With multiple Super Rugby titles to his name and World Cup experience, the 30-year-old was keen to impart his wisdom.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I was re-evaluating where I was at midway through last year, \u2018Crono\u2019 approached me and it seemed like a really good opportunity,\u201d Bridge said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI think looking at the way the club started last season shows the direction that they’re heading. You see the nine Wallabies that returned last week as us having a really good core of players. Hopefully, I can be here and hopefully add to the success of the club.<\/p>\n
\u201cI won’t go out of my way to be a leader, but I’ve been doing this for a little while now. If I can help out where I can, I’ll be happy to.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI’m just enjoying being back into the Super Rugby side of things. We definitely play a pretty exciting attacking brand of footy as well, so that’s what I’m enjoying so far. It’s been a long pre-season, so we’re all looking forward to having a run around tomorrow against the Reds and putting it all out on the pitch.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Force will open their season against the ACT Brumbies on February 14 at HBF Park.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former Crusaders and All Blacks flyer George Bridge is embracing the challenge of moving into the midfield as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":431435,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[64,63,760,85,11229],"class_list":["post-431434","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-rugby","tag-sports","tag-western-force"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431434","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=431434"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431434\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/431435"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=431434"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=431434"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=431434"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}