Bevan, who hails from Bridgend, is a High Performance Consultant with World Rugby and is currently on secondment as a strength and conditioning coach with the USA national side.
The Welshman who spent five years as S&C coach with the England Cricket side before returning to Welsh rugby with the Dragons will get the chance to pit his wits against Eddie Jones’ England in Japan with the US having been drawn in the same pool.
“I am employed by World Rugby and I’m on secondment with the US,” said Bevan.
“I learnt a hell of a lot from working in cricket. It was a great experience and I worked with England cricket during a very successful period in their history.
“At one stage we were number one in the world in all formats and we won a few Ashes competitions. Working in rugby is pretty straightforward because the association between getting fitter and stronger is pretty easy to promote with the players.
“But with the England and Wales Cricket Board the correlation between being stronger and fitter isn’t necessarily as straightforward to understand. The ability to sell that to the players and think of better ways of trying to improve their performance had benefits coming back into rugby.
“The way I go about what I do and my approach with players and coaches is now different as a result of being in cricket. It helped me recognise how important it is to build a healthy relationship with players and coaches to enable them to enhance their own performance.”
The USA have been drawn in the same pool as England, France, Argentina and Tonga with most pundits giving them no chance of making an impact in Japan. But with Bevan in charge of their strength and conditioning the Eagles will at the very least be in the best possible physical shape.
“The plan is to be competitive at the World Cup,” he said. “We are training very hard to ensure that we can perform to the best of our ability in Japan.
“It’s going to be very tough but we want to challenge and compete with every team we play against. Historically tier two nations have maybe fallen away in the last 25-20 minutes of big games against tier one nations.
“We’re working very hard in the US to fix that and I think we’ll be a lot more competitive than we have been in the past at this World Cup. I think we can certainly close the gap from an S&C point of view with the sides who are currently ranked in the top 10 in the world rankings.”
