There are some things in life that just don’t make sense to me. Non-alcoholic beer. Tofu. And the way that Bristol Bears manage a game of rugby. For the second week in a row, they stared defeat in the face but then casually flipped it the bird with a fearless come back display at the death, pulling yet another bonus point victory out of the bag like Paul Daniels extracting a rabbit from his hat at the height of his prime-time pomp. However, the last minute encore was no illusion and, in fact, marked the perfect finale to a breathless, exhilarating and at times outrageous game of rugby, and one that was fitting for a clash between the two most exciting teams in the Premiership.
When the team lists were announced on the Friday, they were so filthy that most Premier Rugby fans probably had to have a full body hose and a lie down before contemplating the fireworks that were to come. Since dispensing with Paul Gustard not long after the Bears humbled them in the second half at the Stoop on Boxing Day, Harlequins have been on somewhat of a roll, dishing out bonus point victories like confetti as the heavy artillery of Marler, Care and Brown finally decided to lead by example whilst the younger bucks of Smith, Dombrandt and Marchant had provided the stardust and sparkle. For their part, Bristol were welcoming back the League’s bona fide superstar, Semi Radrada, who’s beard appeared to have grown slightly bushier during his injury lay off, but his rig looked as filthy as ever and no doubt he had been advised by Max Lahiff to talk to his ancestors and get up close and personal to the opposition, but not in that way.
So, with so many tasty match ups across the pitch you half expected those team sheets to appear on the landing page of Deliveroo.com with John Afoa and Joe Marler the daily special, and no doubt sparking a bun fight amongst all the major global streaming services to secure the rights to the referee’s microphone. Moreover, when BT Sport flashed up each team’s season attack stats during the warm up, it left viewers salivating more than a pack of rabid Pavlov’s dogs who hadn’t eaten for a month and happened to be passing Big Ben at 6pm. All the planets appeared aligned for a humdinger of a game.
The only dampener on the whole proceedings, however, was the appointment of the relatively, ok completely, unknown Hamish Smales as ref. Looking more like the lost Wurzel than a topflight adjudicator or perhaps more fittingly, an extra from Monarch of the Glen given his forename, his pick was clearly the result of the rearranged Six Nations game in Paris the night before, as you felt that a Wayne Barnes or a Luke Pearce would have been given the whistle in normal circumstances, just to squeeze a few more tickets out at the virtual box office. That said, despite the fact I kept expecting him to finally provide fans with the answer to ‘where be that blackbird to?’, I thought he had a reasonable game, although his style and hair/beard combo was definitely more friendly Geography teacher than confident Franglais speaker like the Paris mob. In fact, I was somewhat disappointed that he didn’t have padded elbows on his shirt and Hush Puppies on his feet. Talking about hair, Joe Marler had clearly decided to get an early shot in against Afoa by arranging his barnet in such a way that it emphasised that he actually had some, but in fact it made him look like a cross between Northampton’s Teimana Harrison and Exeter’s Johnny Hill. And that’s not a good thing as both have recently been referred to the HLO (Horrendous Lid Ombudsman). Taking of lids and match ups, Danny Care vs Andy Uren was an interesting follicular head to head. Literally.
Anyway, the game pretty much lived up to its pre match hype and turned in to a late, late show win for the Bears, even trumping the comeback they made against Saints the week before. It’s great being a Bristol fan, don’t get me wrong, but it seems like since we beat Bath, every match has been a game of chicken for the fans. Just as we think we are finally going to lose one, we survive by the skin of our teeth. In fact, it seems to have become so habitual that post match Pat now seems at ease with the situation and even managed to crack a joke about it after the match, warning the faithful that we should more of the same.
But, both teams showed why they are hunting the turf at Twickenham and with three excellent tries in the first half the Bears should really have been further ahead. It was rather fortunate that Marcus Smith’s kickable first penalty hit the post but there was nothing lucky about the way that big Dave Attwood collected the rebound, shimmied past Joe Marchant and then popped it to Captain Fantastic to set up a coast to coast try that the big man finished himself. To say he cantered over the line was a fair description as sprinting has never been in the vocabulary of hefty second row forwards, but for a split second you thought he was going to give it a full blow swallow dive but he clearly changed his mind at the last minute and executed the sort of belly dive for which you applaud your child when secretly you know it is shit.
After that the Bears did that irritating thing where you let the opposition score every time you pop a worldy. It’s probably not worth mentioning the way that Danny Care stripped the ball from ‘England’s’ Ben Earl as easily as a teenage mugger relieving a pensioner of her handbag and he was probably only saved a towel whipping from his teammates at half time thanks to the mitigation provided by Andy Uren’s ugly pass to him in the first place. Uren redeemed himself with Bristol’s second try when his delicious flat pass enabled the human cement mixer, Bryan Byrne, to lay some Quins tarmac and set up Fitz Harding for the dab down, but they left the best until last when Radrada marmelised a brave but ultimately doomed pincer tackle from the Quins half backs and offloaded to wing man extraordinaire, Piers O’Conor. In fact it could be described as a ‘quantum’ offload in the way that it laid waste to the normal laws of physics. Semi had an erratic game but with six offloads in total there was no arguing the havoc that he wreaked.
However, some canny game management which included a few Smith penalties and an opportunistic Danny care drop goal (yes, a drop goal!) meant that the Bristol lead was only four points at the break. No doubt after the team had finished giving Earl a wedgie, Pat’s message must have been very simple: keep the penalty count down, control the game and give the ball to Semi. But in trying to build a commanding second half lead, sadly, the Bears were the architects of their own downfall. It seemed like every time they got themselves into a potentially dangerous position they managed to relinquish possession and in searching for the blueprints of victory they only found a few illegible notes that had been chucked in the recycling. At 21-33 down with 5 minutes to go and not having added to their half time total, it even suggested that team had clearly paid more attention to the half time Earl debagging than their DoR’s advice.
But cometh the hour, cometh the trusty rolling maul. For the first Dan Thomas try, the TMO actually came to the Bears assistance by pointing out that he was short of the line on account of the wind resistance caused by his shorts being down by his knees and did us a massive favour by affording the ref the opportunity to award a penalty try and thereby avoiding a tricky conversion. Suddenly hope sprung like a bunch of dancing daffodils and when the Bears secured another lineout deep in the 22 as the clock turned red, everyone knew it wasn’t just a case of if, but who, would score the try. Like one huge Eton Wall game fifteen Bears drove for the line only for Kyle Sinckler to emerge with both the oval and the biggest smile we have seen on his face since his signing. This was no doubt partly due to having got one over on Joe Marler, who had probably been giving him serious and constant chirp during the second half, and partly because it’s always fun to survive a massive pile on. With Callum Sheedy stroking the conversion with all the coolness of the sort of player who has won a major international championship, the victory was secured.
It was tough on Quins to be fair, as Care and Smith had managed the game away from the Bears for most of the second half, but when you looked at the attack stats there was really only one team in it. As usual the coaches will be worried about the ill discipline as we march to Bordeaux, but with even more players returning and confidence remaining sky high, there is no reason to suggest that a major assault on the Champions Cup is possible with ‘I’d rather be a Bear than play a Bear’ the latest motivational poster stuck on the walls of the High Performance Centre.
If you want to hear more about this game and general light hearted Bears related rugby banter in general, then click here to listen to the latest episode of Bears Beyond The Gate, the only Bristol rugby podcast made by fans, for fans.
Filthy Rig 