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A win this year?
By Ian Todd
April 7 2006

Richard Hill keeps faith with the team that won a rare and welcome victory at Gloucester as Bristol prepare to welcome Newcastle Falcons to the Memorial Stadium.

Richard Hill keeps faith with the team that won a rare and welcome victory at Gloucester as Bristol prepare to welcome Newcastle Falcons to the Memorial Stadium.

Just three rounds of fixtures remain after this one and the relegation situation may be a lot clearer at the end of the weekend. Neither Bristol or Newcastle are out of the mire yet, but events at Leeds this Friday evening will go a long way to settling the situation. A win for Saracens will surely doom Leeds, whilst a victory for the Yorkshire side means that it will remain a fight to the finish. Bristol can only concentrate on winning against Newcastle to ensure we have the 40 points Richard Hill has targeted for Premiership survival.

Bristol inflicted a 16-14 defeat on the Falcons at Kingston Park back in September, a win that took as to the top of the Premiership! Frankly the game was one of those where the score did not reflect the level of comfort in the performance and even when Newcastle came back into the game I didn’t feel at all worried. Of course our next performance against Gloucester showed the reality of life back in the Premiership. With any luck our recent win against the same opponents will lift the confidence of the squad and enable us to do the double over the Falcons.

We have lost just one of our past four games in the Premiership, a 20-21 home defeat to London Irish, but we haven’t won at all this year at the Mem. Newcastle, in contrast, have won just one of their past four, a good 24-16 home win over Leicester. Worryingly, neither team has obtained a try scoring bonus point this season.

Newcastle make five changes to the side that beat Connacht in the ECC. They have a solid rather than intimidating pack and some flair in the backs. Matthew Burke has been an excellent acquisition for them giving reliable defense and a cutting edge in attack.

I feel that this is a game we are perfectly capable of winning, but given the stakes with both sides requiring the win to make themselves safe I predict…a good win for Bris!

Bristol Rugby:

Vaughan Going, Lee Robinson, Rob Higgitt, Sam Cox, Brian Lima, Jason Strange, Shaun Perry, David Hilton, Mark Regan, Darren Crompton, Nathan Budgett, Gareth Llewellyn, Matt Salter (captain), Joe El Abd, Dan Ward-Smith

Replacements:

Mark Irish, Saul Nelson, Roy Winters, Mariano Sambucetti, Craig Short/ Geraint Lewis, Danny Gray, David Lemi

Newcastle

Matthew Burke,Tom May, Jamie Noon, Mark Mayerhofler, Joe Shaw, Toby Flood, Hall Charlton, Micky Ward, Andy Long, Robbie Morris, Andy Perry, Andy Buist, Mike McCarthy, Cory Harris, Colin Charvis (captain)