Louis Rees-Zammit may have been denied a hat-trick against Northampton but there is no doubting who stole the show as Bristol maintained their flying start to the season by downing the champions. The Wales winger scored twice, earned the Bears’ late penalty try and, just to make clear that there is more than one showman in town, produced his own version of Henry Pollock’s pulse celebration. He’s doing great things for the sport.
If we’re going to grow this game we need personalities, he’s definitely one and he’s got to do something next week after the forfeit we spoke about yesterday.” All things told, it was a fine day for Bristol – a nasty-looking head injury to Benhard van Rensburg aside – and a pretty miserable one for Northampton. The Bears helped themselves to six tries with Gabriel Oghre, Tom Jordan and the excellent Harry Randall also on the scoresheet but it is the defensive resilience that will please Pat Lam most. Back in May, Bristol shipped 94 points to the Saints at Northampton but there is far more steel about them on this evidence.
Though it hurt, I watched it and built the whole pre-season around that in a sense.” The downside was Van Rensburg’s injury. He received lengthy treatment and was taken off on a stretcher just before half-time and appeared to be knocked out cold. The South-African born centre is all-action but suffered the same fate during England’s summer victory over Argentina.
He was seen by the Bristol dugout in the second half, however, allaying fears that the injury was serious. For the champions, it was a day to forget. For the first hour, pretty much everything that could go wrong did.
Balls were dropped, sitters were missed, tries were disallowed and the lineout went horribly awry. Pollock began brightly but endured a disappointing afternoon too, taking a painful looking low blow in the first half for good measure. Then came Alex Mitchell from the replacements bench and Northampton briefly threatened the unlikeliest of comebacks but two late yellow cards – the second for Tommy Freeman for a bodycheck on Rees-Zammit which led to a penalty try – put paid to that.
I’m good friends with Tommy and it’s all love after but in the moment I was a bit gutted.” Fitz Harding was a constant presence at the breakdown for the Bears and his early turnover gave Bristol a lineout deep in Northampton’s 22, from which there was no stopping the lineout drive with Oghre dotting down. However, Northampton hit back almost immediately with George Hendy going over on the left after a burst from Pollock. Bristol seized the initiative thereafter and Rees-Zammit eventually went over after a smart pass from Oghre.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
