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In theory Bristol’s Big Day Out concept in Cardiff had all the right ingredients. Here was a chance to attract a few more floating voters and show them a good time in one of the world’s great stadiums. For the Prem as a whole it also massages the league’s aggregate attendance figures and projects the sense of a tournament growing steadily bigger and better.
So much for best-laid plans. The attendance was about 6,000 fewer than the club’s previous game in Cardiff last season and the outcome also did nothing for Bristolian blood pressure as the Bears suffered a serious dent to their playoff chances at the hands of a Harlequins side winless in their previous six matches.
Quins, however, fully deserved this morale-boosting win, in effect sealed by a 58th-minute try from their Argentina winger Rodrigo Isgró. The London side have had a dire season but this week’s announcement of a reshuffled coaching staff for next season seemed to encourage them to draw a line in the sand. Their defensive performance was certainly full of guts and never allowed the Bears to get into their stride.
It leaves Bristol in fifth place, seven points off the playoff positions, and this is a bad time for them to be losing momentum. Their captain, Fitz Harding, was as tireless as ever and, for a long time, his seventh-minute try kept his team’s noses in front. Steven Luatua grabbed a late consolation try but Jamie Benson’s last-minute penalty sealed a relieving Quins win.
For Bristol it could be very costly, particularly in a week whenthey announced a pre-tax annual loss of £5.6m despite a slightly increased turnover of £11.1m. With Leicester and Exeter having both delivered bonus point wins to cement their current places in the top four, Pat Lam’s team will need to refocus quickly with a Champions Cup trip to Toulouse looming next Friday.
From Quins’s perspective, though, this performance answered a few questions that have been lobbed in their direction lately. Following their below-par home defeat to Gloucester, this was a test of character they could ill afford to fail, even with Marcus Smith absent on a Caribbean break and a spiralling injury list. In the event their head coach Jason Gilmore was delighted at the way his team bounced back from their own high-profile letdown against the Bears just before Christmas. “It was nice to get a little bit of revenge from that big game,” said Gilmore.
Prem roundup: Leicester inflict 'disastrous first 20 minutes' on Gloucester
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George Skivington was angry with parts of his Gloucester side’s performance after seeing them comfortably beaten 36-17 by in-form Leicester at Villa Park. It was Gloucester’s first visit to the Premier League football ground but they blew any chance of making it a fruitful one by conceding 22 points in the opening 16 minutes and were never able to recover. They did show some spirit to score three times as Leicester became careless and disjointed with the Slater Cup already safely in the bag.
Jamie Blamire, with two, Will Wand, Gabriel Hamer-Webb, Orlando Bailey and Harry Wells were Leicester’s try-scorers, with Billy Searle adding two conversions and James O’Connor one. Matias Alemanno, Will Joseph and Dian Bleuler scored Gloucester’s tries, one of which Charlie Atkinson converted.
Skivington said: “I’m trying to calm down but if I was picking a team now for next week, there would certainly be some changes in it. It was a disastrous first 20 minutes with a couple of key moments whereby individual players chose not to be more challenging in the tackle. There was also an issue at scrum time."
The Slater Cup is played for between the two clubs in honour of their former player Ed Slater (pictured with Ollie Chessum), who was diagnosed with motor neurone disease in 2022.
The Exeter forwards coach Ross McMillan said his side executed their gameplan very well in Friday's 38-14 win at Newcastle. In a ruthless opening 25 minutes at at Kingston Park Paul Brown-Bampoe scored twice either side of Campbell Ridl’s effort before Olly Woodburn bagged the bonus point. Ridl scored his second try before the break and Stephen Varney struck immediately after the restart.
McMillan said: “Especially in games that start the way that they did, you have ebbs and flows in the game and it’s hard to maintain that. It’s probably an area we want to make sure we get right again if we get the opportunity to do that. The start of the game looked exactly how we wanted it to go. Fair play to our players, they executed the plan very well.”
Newcastle's head coach, Stephen Jones, was disappointed by the start but hoped his side could see it as a lesson. “We’ve got some really good learnings as a group tonight. We’re blooding some young players,” he said. “Our group will be better for this experience. From a coaching perspective I’ll be better for it as well. I know some areas we can push, especially for next week.” PA Media
Photograph: Nathan Stirk/Getty Images Europe
“We spoke a lot about our mindset and what we wanted to do. We wanted to dictate terms through the contact and line speed and I thought the boys did that in spades tonight. There’s still a lot of work to do at this club but today was more like us from last year.”
That had not seemed a particularly likely scenario before kick-off but Alex Dombrandt and the entire Quins back-row rolled their sleeves up from the start, the No 8 plunging over from close range after 22 minutes to underline his side’s intent. Bristol can begin to look mortal in a stop-start game if their talented backs are unable to keep fizzing the ball from side to side.
Even the pacy Louis Rees-Zammit struggled to escape his pursuers and the full-back’s mixed performance was hardly the home town antidote he wanted after a Six Nations campaign that delivered only one Welsh win in five attempts.
At least hiring out their stadium will earn the cash-strapped Welsh Rugby Union a few extra quid but inviting the Prem tanks on to their covered lawn is a calculated risk. In an ideal world, the locals would love an annual brace of Anglo-Welsh big games between Cardiff and the Bears rather than watching their teams disappear off to South Africa to play opponents with whom they have neither much historical beef nor intense geographical rivalry.
This particular contest, though, was not a spectacular advert for the superiority of the rival product from across the Severn Bridge. The last half hour did at least have a bit more edge, particularly after Jarrod Evans had put his side ahead 8-7 with a simple 51st-minute penalty for not releasing in the tackle.
Teams and scorers
ShowBristol Bears: Rees-Zammit; Ravouvou, Moroni (Janse van Rensburg, 49), Williams, Boshoff (Ibitoye, 52); Jordan, Randall (Marmion, 62); Genge (Woolmore, 60), Oghre, Kloska (Chawatama, 69), Dun (Taylor, 71), Owen, Luatua, Harding (capt), S Grondona (B Grondona, 71). Not used: Gwilliam.
Tries: Harding, Luatua. Cons: Williams 2.
Harlequins: Benson; Isgró, Murley, Bradley, David; Evans (Kerr, 60), Townsend (Grant, 68); Kerrod (Hobson, 50), Walker (Riley, 50), Jones (Delgado, 34), Treadwell (Carr, 56), Williams (Green, 50), Petti, Kenningham (Driscoll, 56), Dombrandt (capt).
Tries: Dombrandt, Isgró. Con: Benson. Pens: Evans, Benson.
Referee: A Leal. Att: 45,119
Surely Bristol could not become Quins’ first away victims of a desperately disappointing season? The longer the game lasted, though, the more the visitors’ confidence began to grow and they fully merited their second try, Isgró leaving his station on the right wing to arc around the midfield defence and score near the posts to reward a purposeful period of pressure. When the Bears were plotting their big day out this major jolt was not remotely part of the plan.
