Bristol Grind Out Draw

Wasps Defend
By Ian Todd
February 20 2006

We are still looking for our first win of the year, but Sunday's dour draw with the Premiership champions lifted us two places up the league and increased our advantage over Leeds.

Tommy Hayes was given his first Premiership start for Bristol, presumably to inject variety into some ponderous looking play from the Bristol backs in the run up to this match. Hayes, looked rusty from the outset, kicking the ball dead from his second touch of the ball and then kicking out on the full with an attempted touch-finder. In fairness, this did serve to indicate his much greater kicking range over the bench-warming Jason Strange. Eventually, Hayes missed two penalties either side of half-time and the second apparently provoked his replacement by Strange, whose reliability as a place-kicker would be a clear advantage in what ultimately proved to be a tight contest with penalties likely to be the deciding factor.

Wasps, after being held at home by Northampton in their previous outing, looked the more dangerous with the ball in hand in the initial stages of the game. They overcame the early loss of the centre Stuart Abbott to injury, able to replace him with the powerful and highly-rated Ayoola Erinle, but their attacks came from deep and were well covered by the Bristol defence, taking a leaf out of the visitors rush-defence training manual. In the set-pieces, however, Wasps looked vulnerable to the efforts Bristol pack, struggling at the scrum and line-out. The Bristol front-row excelled and Nathan Budgett gave an excellent contribution in both tight and loose. As a consequence Wasps were unable to establish any territorial domination.

Equally, Bristol never really threatened to break the defensive stalemate with a try, although the nocturnal Lee Robinson and the impressive Dan Ward-Smith, who become increasingly prominent as the game wore on, made good breaks in the second half from broken play. Wasps were able to slip passes out of the tackle, most dangerously in the last quarter of the game when former Bristol second-row Simon Shaw off-loaded to Fraser Waters, who failed to see the chance of an overlap, but overall they were unable to lift their pace or find any way through the Bristol defence.

A draw was probably a fair reflection of the performance of both sides. It could have been more for Bristol had all penalties been kicked, with at least 12 points being missed. Although it was clear that penalties were likely to settle a low-scoring game, it was inexplicable that Strange was asked to kick for goal from what most regular watchers of Bristol would have thought well outside his range. The ball promptly fell well short and we lost the opportunity of a rare attacking line-out close to the Wasps line. Perhaps the biggest cheer of the afternoon came with Staunton’s missed kick shortly before full-time, which would have probably have given Wasps an undeserved win.

Since beating Leicester at the end of last year, Bristol had slipped down towards the foot of table but this result has arrested that fall and we travel now to Saracens. They were heavily defeated in a highly entertaining game against Northampton and find themselves in an extremely uncomfortable league position and with a losing streak. A forward performance of this quality and with a bit more penetration could see Bristol take another step towards league safety.