Hill hoping to avoid the drop with rivals
FORMER Bath Chronicle rugby writer MIKE TREMLETT, has been combatting COVID-19 lockdown by delving into his personal scrapbook of memories. Here, he recalls a story from around a decade ago.
In October 2008, former Bath idol ‘Richer Dill’, as he was known in his home town, was grappling with the aftermath of a poor start to the 2008/9 season for his then charges, Bath’s arch enemies Brizzle...
RICHARD Hill has told his Bristol players to recreate the Memorial Stadium siege mentality which took them to the Guinness Premiership play-offs two years ago, if they want to beat the drop this term.
Bristol went into Friday night’s home European Challenge Cup Pool 2 clash with big-spending Toulon looking to end a run of 13 straight defeats in all competitions - a losing run unprecedented in the club’s professional history.
Hill switched his players’ focus to Europe after five straight Premiership defeats this season to league leaders Bath (20-33), Sale Sharks (6-9) and Saracens (15-23) at home and Harlequins (33-13) and Newcastle Falcons (17-3), picking up just two bonus points along the way.
But the 47-year-old former Bath and England scrum-half insists he is losing no sleep over his club’s slow start to the new Premiership campaign, yet.
“If the players rediscover the stubborn streak which served us so well in the two seasons after we came back up to the Premiership, we will dig our way out of trouble,” he said.
“It’s far too early for doom and gloom predictions because the squad here is very buoyant and very positive and they know they are playing well in certain aspects of the game. We’re just not winning at the moment.
“When we do get a win, we’ll start putting results together because the players are actually enjoying themselves in matches and the way we’re playing stands up to scrutiny against the teams at the top end of the Premiership table.”
The early season OPTA stats, the Premiership’s accepted form indicators, bear out Hill’s claim with only two clubs, Bath and Saracens, better his side’s record on rucks won and passes made, while Bristol are second only to continuity kings Bath on offloads and their line-out is currently rated the fourth best in the Premiership.
“We’re playing good rugby and the squad here is learning fast, but we need to improve in a couple of key areas,” acknowledged Hill.
“Our scrum, which is unlike us, is the poorest in the Premiership this season but we brought Darren Crompton, who’s been injured, and Mark Regan, who hasn’t been playing because of selection issues, back against Toulon to bring their experience to bear.
“And our defence, which has been renowned for making opposing teams work for tries, is struggling.
“We’re shipping sloppy tries because our midfield three - Adrian Jarvis, Kevin Maggs and Junior Fatialofa - aren’t used to the way we’ve been defending and it’s costing us.
“We’ve missed Rob Higgett, our defensive captain last season, in the centre. He organised things for us so well but he moved to Llanelli over the summer and we haven’t really settled down without him yet.
“Kevin Maggs played very little rugby last season through injury and Junior Fatialofa, who was earmarked for the defensive leadership role, got injured in our opening Premiership game against Bath and has been missing since.
“As a result, we scored the try of the season in the EDF against Northampton to finish off two-anda-half minutes of the best rugby I’ve seen from Bristol in my time here, for instance, and then conceded a penalty and ended under our own posts a couple of minutes later.
“That sort of thing is killing us.” Hill and his coaching staff and players had to tear up their script for the season during the summer, when Bristol’s plans to play their home games at Rodney Parade this term while the Memorial Stadium was being developed by landlords Bristol Rovers had to be rethought after Rovers shelved the stadium project.
“We’d adopted the mentality that we would be playing in front of smaller crowds a long way from Bristol and we were ready to fight for everything we were going to get out of our home, in inverted commas, games.
“We were prepared for 18 months’ battling for every point in
Newport and everybody was looking forward to the prospect of coming back here to a new stadium.
“Then, out of the blue, all bets were off and we no longer had a clear idea of where we’d be in two years in time.
“We lost our main strip sponsor Bass, because they didn’t want to follow us to the other side of the Severn Crossing into Wales, so we were unable to put any corporate hospitality plans into place for this season and our season ticket sales were down drastically because of the aborted move to Wales.
“We had to pay to pull out of the agreement with the Dragons and that, along with everything else, kicked a massive hole in our budget for the season severely restricting what we could and couldn’t do on the recruitment front.
“Then the credit crunch bit, potential sponsors we approached when we knew we would be playing at the Mem all pulled their horns in and there’s just no money about.
“We were already faced with the prospect of losing a fortune over the next two seasons anyway and our budget was cut for this season at a time when other clubs in the Premiership are spending more under the new salary cap rules.
“The Premiership table doesn’t make good reading for us at the moment but we’re only five games into a 22-game campaign and this club has a good squad, hard-working management and good owners.
“I’m confident we won’t be relegated.”