Gloucester see off Bears
GLOUCESTER Rugby won 38-31 in the Premiership Rugby Cup on Saturday to go top of Pool One but the hosts made hard work of it at Kingsholm against arguably a thirdstring Bristol Bears side.
With both teams missing an array of world-class stars due to the Autumn internationals and injuries, and with Bristol further impacted with Pat Lam having put out his strongest possible 23 for the 26-18 victory over South Africa A on Thursday night, the home side were on top throughout at Kingsholm with new centre signing Seb Atkinson and number eight Jake Polledri prominent.
The former Italy international, who actually came through the Bristol academy before moving up the road, continues on his return from what was feared to be a potentially career-ending knee and leg injury two years ago.
It took less than a minute for Gloucester to score the opening try of the contest as a botched restart from the visitors saw the Cherry and Whites regather the ball and spread it wide for Tom Seabrook to offload to put Jake Morris over in the left hand corner. Gloucester skipper George Barton missed the conversion and Bristol hit back with a penalty.
The hosts’ superior forward power was telling and on 21 minutes Jack Clement powered over.
Ten minutes later, the hosts’ prop Ciaran Knight touched down.
Bristol hit back with the best try of the game as quick ball at a ruck opened up space for Oscar Lennon to snipe through, he offloaded to centre James Williams who
GLOUCESTER RUGBY .... 38 BRISTOL BEARS .............. 31
offloaded to Tom Whiteley. The flyhalf stepped the final defender with a big left foot plant and raced in under the posts. But the Bears then switched off and debutant Atkinson, quick tapping to himself having won a jackal penalty, ran in untouched under the posts to make it 26-10 at half time.
Atkinson caused havoc again in the second as an early break forced Jake Kerr to kill the ball close to his own tryline to avoid conceding a try, but in doing so the Scottish international earned a yellow card.
With Bristol a man down, Barton exploited the space with a fourman miss-pass to Morris who touched down in the corner.
But Bristol would not be shaken off and Williams finished a try in the corner after a steaming line from new recruit Noah Heward got the visitors close. Bears struck again with Whiteley finishing a counter-attack to make it a onescore contest at 31-24. But just two minutes later a magical break from Cherry and Whites scrum-half Matty Jones opened up the visitors to put replacement hooker Seb Blake over the whitewash with the frontrower showing good speed to finish the chance.
Bears then kicked to the corner and summer signing Fred Davies was powered over by the pack.
The victory takes Gloucester top of the pool with a trip to Exeter Chiefs, just a day after their Premiership game with Northampton Saints.
Bath Rugby: 15 Tom de Glanville, 14 Will Butt, 13 Jonathan Joseph, 12 Max Ojomoh, 11 Matt Gallagher, 10 Orlando Bailey, 9 Max Green; 1 Arthur Cordwell, 2 Tom Dunn (c), 3 D’Arcy Rae, 4 Fergus Lee-Warner, 5 Tom Ellis, 6 Josh Bayliss, 7 Miles Reid, 8 Richard de Carpentier.
Impact players: 16 Niall Annett, 17 Valeriy Morozov, 18 Johannes Jonker, 19 Quinn Roux, 20 Ted Hill, 21 Tom Carr-Smith, 22 Ollie Lawrence, 23 Joe Cokanasiga, 24 Wesley White.
Barbarians: 15 Mike Brown (c), 14 Francois Hougaard, 13 Luther Burrell, 12 Levi Aumua, 11 Marland Yarde, 10 Damian McKenzie, 9 Gareth Simpson; 1 Murray McCallum, 2 Tom Cruse, 3 John Ryan, 4 Graham Kitchener, 5 Elliott Stooke, 6 Kiran McDonald, 7 Iacopo Bianchi, 8 Abe Papali’i
Replacements: 16 Marco Manfredi, 17 Hayden Thompson-Stringer, 18 Elliott Millar-Mills, 19 Tim Cardwell, 20 Olly Robinson, 21 Cathal Forde, 22 Jacopo Trulla, 23 AJ Lam, 24 Matt Banahan