WINGING

Bristol Bears duo MILLIE DAVID and RENEEQA BONNER are polar opposites but the best of friends who are both fighting for the same jersey

- JOSH GRAHAM

THEY SAY opposites attract and that certainly rings true for Bristol Bears' speed queens Millie David and Reneeqa Bonner. Before they tell us about their polar opposite personality types, we observe on our day in Bristol how the pair operate in different ways.

David studies maths at University of the West of England and loves it, while Bonner hates university and has failed assignments on her sports and business management course at Hartpury University. She's more of a visual learner.

David likes solving Rubik's Cubes and has a personal best of 58 seconds, while Bonner is more likely to be found watching TikTok edits of Princess Diana.

But since the pair met at the start of preseason the year before last, they have become firm friends - although it didn't happen instantly.

“We weren't best friends straightaway; we were friends, acquaintances, I guess,” says David. “We just knew of each other, like colleagues, and then we just got chatting. Ren already had her friend group within Bristol, but I was brand new and a little bit younger than them, so I wasn't straightaway part of that group.

“But as the season went on, and because we're both in the same position, we do a lot of training together. The individual and position-specific unit sessions mean we're together all the time. So we spent a lot more time together and got on really well.

“That year, we also did England U20s together and Ren would drive us there, so we spent a lot of time in the car going to camps. We just got really close really quickly.”

Bonner, a year senior to David at 21, does the driving but she relies on her copilot to navigate and keep things on track.