When Premier Rugby’s twitter feed published the current table after this weekend’s fixtures, they declared that we are now approaching the ‘business end’ of the season. Seventeen down and nine to go. As such, it seems like a good time to glance over Bristol’s interim performance accounts and try to forecast what might be filed when the season climaxes in early June, although one thing we can say for sure is that it certainly hasn’t been orgasmic and if we’re not careful the heroics of last year may turn out to be just a premature ejaculation of false promises and undelivered dreams.
The bare stats do not look good. Only 5 wins in 15 games, and let’s face it if you got a success rate of 33% in your exams you aren’t going to be looking forward to showing your school report to your parents. Given that essentially Bristol Bears is the single child of its fans, it is no wonder then that some are metaphorically beginning to think about making an appointment to see the headmaster.
But when you break that down even further and look at our performances in the second half it gets even worse. As @redbarney has pointed out on Twitter, the stats are 136 points for and 238 against and that’s also taking into account the crazy five-minute bombardment against Irish at Ashton Gate once the game had gone and they were already in the showers. It smacks of either a lack of full match fitness or too often a bench of diminishers rather than finishers.
But the final, most distressing stat of all is the differential between where we finished last season and where we are now. A nine-place swing in the wrong direction is the sort of reversal of fortunes that hit fans hard and given we are 13 points behind Saints in 9th, there is an argument to suggest that we will do well to hold onto this disappointing position. Granted, no one has a right to own success but given the lofty expectations created by the first three years of the Bears’ revolution, it feels nothing less than a serious slip down the oft-mentioned mountain and whilst base camp is still firmly occupied by them from down the road, it is now unrealistic to think that we have got the sherpas, crampons and navigation skills to glimpse the summit let alone get anywhere near climbing it.
And what makes it worse is the schadenfreude oozing out of Tigers’ fans as they see us slide.
In short, achieving top six is now the only vaguely realistic goal left and even that is about as likely as an Apprentice candidate delivering a solid pitch to industry experts. In fact, if you equated Bristol’s season so far to the quest for Lord Sugar’s gold you would say that we’ve been pretty much brought into the boardroom after every task and have only avoided being fired because he likes the look of the business plan despite minimal evidence of actually delivering it.
Which takes us neatly onto the ‘Bears way’. Is this where the fundamental problem lies? Is it too narrow? Do we need a plan B, C or even D?
As has been discussed elsewhere the almost messianic proclamation of intent from the very start of the rebrand now feels more of a curse than a blessing, with a game plan that at the moment appears to be less risk and reward and more risk and knock forward.
Whilst no one denies that trying to play rugby the ‘proper’ way is a good idea, and as such means that Pat still has plenty of credit in the fan trust fund, the way we have fallen away in so many games suggests that we just don’t have the personnel to sustain it. It is a plan that requires high skill and high tempo and with an unbalanced squad that relies on up and coming talent plucked from lower down to subsidise the superstars higher up, you are always going to struggle when the big players get injured or lack form. This has clearly happened to Bristol this year and whilst every team has injuries it is who has been injured that has hit us hard.
Furthermore, there an argument to say that by trying to play expansive rugby from the get-go we are actually blowing ourselves out rather than the opposition. Traditionally you think that teams without possession become the most tired as the game wears on but when all you have to do is simply spread your defence out in a big long wall, choose your moment to compete at the break down and then let the opposition run from side to side phase after phase until they drop it, pass it forward or get pinged then it starts to make sense why the Bears have delivered such poor second half returns on their investment. They are knackered from all the first half running around and when you are tired you make mistakes. Double that up with a weaker bench and you then have a recipe for defeat despite generally looking like the better side. In short it sometimes feels like we are watching a huge one-sided game of drop-down British bulldog.
The game at Sixways on Friday was a perfect microcosm of everything that has gone wrong this season so far. Whist massive credit should go to Worcester for their discipline and effort, the first twenty minutes was a horror show from a Bristol perspective. To concede two fairly straightforward tries so quickly wasn’t just about poor defence but was equally about failing to exert pressure on Worcester when in the ascendency by finding a kaleidoscope of ways to cough up possession. As a result, we left two doors open and they cantered through. Six minutes in and Ioan Lloyd looked shot.
That said, credit has to be given for the way that the Bears got back into the game, ironically through some grunt up front, but the way that we misused our lineout just before half time would have been comical if it hadn’t been so ridiculous. On a yellow card warning, surely the sensible decision would have been a relatively safe throw to the middle, create a solid maul platform and then draw one more penalty, but on a day when schools had been closed on account of an approaching storm of bibilical proportions, we decided to go high risk and go long, a course of action that not only led to a loss of possession but also allowed Warriors to break from their 22 and almost score themselves. I don’t blame Jake Kerr too much but whoever it was who made the call not only lacked a most basic understanding of meteorology but must have had a brain fart the size of the Arctic tundra. It was almost Michael Fishian in its climactic naivety.
And then there was the second half.
Not scoring from a dominant position just before the break was one thing but not scoring at all in the second period took butchering to a whole new level of Smithfield market style rugby.
After Worcester had got their early shot in with the sort of try you only really expect to see at school rather than elite level, when a big lad steamrollers little lads from 50 yards out, you still felt that the quality in our team would see us through. However, as the half ticked on, there was a nagging feeling of Rorke’s Drift about Warriors as they engineered a perfect defence of their plastic garrison and kept the Bear-shaped Zulus at bay through a combination of high press and front row dominance.
Steve Diamond may not have many similarities to Michael Caine but when it comes to stifling an opponent’s attacking intent, he certainly knows how to blow the bloody doors off. Fair play to him, although given the amount of self-aggrandisement he delivered in his post-match interviews, I do worry that Worcester fans will expect to be winning the 2023 World cup let alone avoiding relegation next year. Time will tell.
Ultimately, it was a bitterly disappointing loss on a bitterly cold night at Sixways. Effort is never in doubt but decision making under pressure was yet again lacking.
Chicken wings passes, out the back offloads, antipodean steps. They are great if they produce end product but look desperate and unnecessary when they don’t. And what about the simple drilled grubber similar to the one that allowed Van De Merve to stroll in for their first try? Luke Morahan did one similar against Falcons for Siva to score but it’s not been seen since. Perhaps Semi could give it a go one time as an alternative to diving head first into contact and whilst I apppreciate that kicking is not the Fijian way this is the English Premiership, not the Olympic Sevens and players have to adapt and be pragmatic. And if they can’t do that themselves then the coaches have to teach them.
So where do we go from here?
The lack of relegation affords an opportunity to reflect, review and rebuild. The Bears’ way needs to evolve and adapt to the changing landscape, with the core belief in expansive rugby retained by a game plan that re-adjusts the balance between risk and reward.
It is an existential tension between ideology and pragmatism and as one of the characters said in Jean Paul Satre’s 1948 play, ‘Les Mains Sales’, in order to succeed ‘you need to get your hands dirty, right up to the elbows’. We all love running rugby but it is also a results game and sometimes principles need to be compromised in order to get a project back on track. With a rejuvenated and heavy loaded Wasps squad arriving in BS3 on Friday it will be interesting to see how the Bears respond and whether it will result in a welcome treat or yet another excrutiating debrief in the boardroom.
Up the Bears!
Filthy Rig 