Bears maul rivals as the struggle continues
There is a gulf as wide as an ocean between legitimate championship contenders Bristol Bears and Premiership cannon fodder Bath Rugby on the evidence of Friday night’s 48-3 thrashing at Ashton Gate.
A merciless Bristol Bears emphatically displayed the balance of power between the two proud clubs, who have been playing this fixture since 1888, has well and truly tipped in favour of Pat Lam’s men who just three years ago were playing in the Championship.
In the first 40 minutes the hosts ran in five tries, adding another two after the break including a stunning 65m run in from Semi Radradra.
Bristol were truly sensational at times, sharing the workload through out the team, with the glue between their world class talents, like Radradra and Charles Piutau, looking every bit as impressive as the marquee men.
Winger Luke Morahan opened the scoring in the fourth minute before passing inside to set up Piutau for the second score of the game just three minutes later.
After opening forays which barely saw Bath touch the ball, Rhys Priestland landed a longrange penalty. Little did he know at the time it would be his side’s only points of the game.
Bristol responded with a Ioan Lloyd effort off the tee, with the teenage fly-half given the room and space to humiliate defenders with his step and passing game in his first outing in the Premiership in the number 10 jersey.
The pressure was unrelenting, with official man of the match Andy Uren darting down the blindside for try number three.
Nine minutes before the break Bath fly-half Rhys Priestland was shown a yellow card for slapping down a pass to the wings, in his absence the visitors conceded 21 points with hooker Bryan Bryne twice bursting over the line before Radradra, on his way to 140m in attack, ran in from inside his own half moments after the second half whistle.
To put things in perspective the entire Bath team managed just 130m gained in attack, but the visitors’ insistence on kicking to the most dangerous runner in world rugby time after time from the restarts was bordering on the idiotic.
A final penalty try saw Bristol surpass their previous best winning margin over Bath, 44-6 back in 1980, and cemented their biggest victory over any side in the Premiership.
Some fearsome goalline defence from the Bears ensured Bath left fortress Ashton Gate with nothing to show from the game, having now conceded 17 tries in their last three games to put the club’s coaches well and truly in the firing line.
Against Bristol alone Bath missed 45 tackles to allow the Bears to gain a staggering 793m in attack, which has to be a another Premiership record ticked off.
Speaking after the game, a shell shocked Stuart Hooper, the Bath director of rugby, pointed to losing both captain Josh Mcnally and fellow lock Elliott Stooke to failed HIAS early in the game as a major set-back, but fronted up to the fact his side were miles off the pace.
He said: “We had everything thrown at us in that game with changes, decisions, but we still should have been a lot better than we were.
“The adversity is one thing, the way we responded is another.
“Whoever we have on the field we expect more on that. We didn’t rely on each other to do the right thing at the right time.
“We have work to do. There is no point trying to hide behind this.
“We have some fantastic individual players but we are not playing as a team. Individuals across the board need to have a look at their game.”