After the disappointing exit from the European Challenge Cup the only real goal left for now is to secure a berth in next year’s Champions Cup. However, as both Leicester and Clermont had demonstrated in the previous two games, having a power pack is essential if you want to go deep in any competition and sadly Friday night against Sale Sharks proved that if you lose the physical battle then it is extremely hard to progress.
There were few positives to take away from the game apart from to admire the dominance of the Sale tackling and in particular the performance of the Curry twins who were mainly responsible for the Bears having very little go-forward and, given there was barely a papadom between them, it was apt that they were awarded joint players’ of the match.
Bristol huffed and puffed but found no way of taking the wind out of the visitors’ sails and it was somewhat ironic that the one Bear who did manage to make some serious metres was the supporter in fancy dress who went coast to coast from the Dolman to the Lansdown without any meaningful intervention from the stewards. Their lacklustre attempts at stopping him mirrored pretty much what was happening on the pitch.
