Rugby Six-try Bristol stay in the hunt for a play-off place
Bristol Bears 40 Leicester Tigers 3
IF you had told Bristol fans a decade ago they would be facing Leicester Tigers in a mustwin game there would have been a distinct air of despair.
Going into this crucial play-off race game in the Gallagher Premiership in 2019-20, Tigers had lost just two of their last ten fixtures against Bristol in the league, but tellingly both of those have come in the last two years as the Bears won home and away last season.
Leicester have been on the decline for several years now but last night Pat Lam’s Bristol side showed just how far the balance of dominance in English rugby has shifted with a 40-3 victory at Ashton Gate.
While their Premiership rivals rested at the weekend, both sides were engaged in European Challenge Cup semi-finals, Bristol advancing to the final against Leicester’s victors Toulon on October 16.
That saw both clubs field muchchanged sides, with former Bristol forwards coach Steve Borthwick making 14 alterations on his first return with Leicester to his former club at the helm of a Premiership side, having departed to join Eddie Jones’ England coaching set-up under a storm cloud back in 2015.
With the Bears desperate for a bonus-point victory to stay in the race for the play-offs until the last day of the regular season - which will be upon us soon enough, coming this Sunday, Lam kept five players from his starting side who bettered Bordeaux-Begles just six days earlier in this marathon of a season.
The fantastic five included lionhearted skipper Steven Luatua and ‘the machine’ Callum Sheedy, despite both men playing all 100 minutes of the gruelling European semi-final encounter. Remarkably, both played from start to finish here again at Ashton Gate.
Leicester came intent on pinning Bristol in with high up and unders and speculative crossfield kicks but the hosts either dealt with them or the bounce of the ball went against the midlands side.
However, it took 16 minutes for the Bears to break the deadlock with Ioan Lloyd dummying and then gliding his way over the line.
The second and third Bristol tries were delivered by the forwards with Nathan Hughes powering over from the back of an advancing fivemetre scrum, before hooker Bryan Byrne touched down at the bottom of a maul from a five-metre line
out. Both scores came following penalties from Tigers. Just four minutes after the break, Bristol wrapped up the bonus-point fourth try with another powerful drive from a line-out to put Dan Thomas over. Harry Thacker came off the bench to score another against his old side following a break down the blindside from Andy Uren, and in the final moment of the game referee Christophe Ridley awarded a penalty try following an intentional knock-on from Harry Simmonds from a Semi Radradra offload
which looked destined for the hands of Niyi Adeolokun.
This was a long way from perfect as both sides struggled in the wet, but Bristol still beat Tigers by a record margin of 37 points.
The toll of fighting on two fronts might just see the Bears come-up short of reaching the play-offs this season, but in typical Bristol fashion it is going to go down to the wire. Bristol must better one of the results achieved by play-off rivals Wasps, Bath and Sale on Sunday to book a top-four place.