Bristol Bears' highly thought of fly-half Tom Wilstead has revealed on social media he will be leaving his hometown club at the end of the season.
The 21-year-old has struggled to make the transition from promising academy talent into the Bears first team with two international fly-halves in AJ MacGinty and Callum Sheedy shouldering the majority of the minutes at fly-half, with Ioan Lloyd also an option.
And with Sam Bedlow and James Williams both comfortable at stand-off as well as their normal centre positions, Wilstead, who joined the Bristol Integrated Academy in July 2020 having graduated through the system from U13s, has found himself as sixth choice in his specialist position leading to him going out on loan to gain experience playing competitive senior rugby.
While Bedlow is joining Sale next season, the arrival of England international Max Malins from Saracens provides director of rugby Pat Lam with yet another fly-half option with the versatile back able to slot in at full-back, wing and number 10.
Taking to Twitter this week, Wilstead shared a highlights reel and wrote: "Plenty of highlights from 2021 to 2023. Enjoyed my journey at the Bears but now looking forward to the next chapter. If you like what you see please get in touch.
He added: "Don’t know where I’m going to end up but I do know the journey isn’t over yet."
While in the context of the strength in depth Lam has available to him at fly-half Wilstead's departure is in many ways understandable, he represent another Bristolian moving on, following the likes of Andy Uren who will join Benetton Treviso and Joe Joyce who is off to Connacht.
And despite having Welsh parents, Wilstead is a Bristol fan through and through. Speaking to The Rugby Paper last year he said: "I have been supporting Bristol since I was four or five when my dad introduced me to them. I first started going to Bristol when they were at the Memorial Ground and watched them throughout the Championship years even when they were losing and weren’t coming up."
When Lam arrived at the Bears in 2017 one of his central visions for the club was to have more Bristolians playing in the team, a goal he is yet to fully realise despite having brought Ellis Genge back to his home town club from Leicester Tigers.
And in reality it is likely to still be some time until there is a strong local contingent running out regularly at Ashton Gate for the first team until the Bears can graduate more players from their rebooted and increasingly successful academy.
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