Win, lose or draw, Bristol have the chance this weekend to get one up on their biggest rivals in the race to avoid relegation from the Guinness Premiership.
Head coach Richard Hill, has, like the bookies, earmarked Newcastle Falcons as the team most likely to slip below Bristol come the end of the season. So he has set his side the task of matching them point for point.
And Sunday’s opponents London Irish provide a perfect opportunity for Bristol to get ahead as the Falcons took nothing from the Exiles’ trip to the North East this season. So if Hill’s team take anything from this weekend, even just a losing bonus point, they will have gained ground.
“We targeted these two games (Gloucester and London Irish) because (Newcastle) went to Kingsholm and got nothing,” said Hill. “We were hoping to get something from there so that would be a little bit of daylight opening up.
“We’re not suddenly in a relegation battle. We were prepared for that.”
Bristol’s record has, in part, matched that of Newcastle’s this season. Both sides took a losing bonus point at home from Sale and all four points, again at home, from Northampton.
“We’ve got to look at (Newcastle’s) results,” said Hill. “They played London Irish at home last week and they didn’t get a single point. So obviously our incentive playing London Irish at home this week is that we’ve got to get something. If we get anything from this game on Sunday that, in our little mini league table of two puts us just a little nudge ahead. It’s going to be tight, but that’s our incentive.”
The game against Gloucester may not have gone as planned, the club slumping to a 29-10 defeat, but Newcastle fell foul of Worcester 26-11 to remain just three points ahead of Bristol and Hill is confident his squad has what it takes to pull off his plan.
“We had one of those evenings at Kingsholm but that happens,” he said. “It’s happened over the last six years for Bristol where we lose the odd game heavily and we’ve learned not to beat ourselves up about it. We make a couple of points out of it and then draw a line under it.
“The mood of the players is absolutely superb. Normally after a heavy defeat it takes them a few days to get over it. But they were absolutely flying on Tuesday. It was as if we’ve won at the weekend and not lost.
“We try to be as positive as we can be, even after defeats. And you have to be. We’ve won two out of 12 games and you can’t keep punishing people again.
“If the effort’s not there then we’ll probably go back to the old school style of training and they’ll be up and down without a ball and running for three hours and a beasting until they can’t run any more. But that doesn’t happen very often. Even against Gloucester the effort was very good. We only had five days to turn it around and they worked hard in the short time available.
“We scored the try of the game with David Lemi’s effort which we kept about two minutes 15 seconds worth of continuity. If you’re a side that’s not bothering you don’t go through two minutes 15 seconds of patient continuity and then finish off with David Lemi’s try. You can’t fault that.”
London Wasps can help Hill’s plan along on Friday in Newcastle by further clipping the Falcons’ wings in front of the Sky TV cameras. Plan B for Hill of course is the showdown between Bristol and Newcastle on February 13 at the Memorial Stadium, a tie which could shape their season, unless they have created enough daylight to breathe easy, starting by beating London Irish.
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