It was another league defeat against our old rivals from up the M5 on Saturday, but boy was it a humdinger of a game of rugby. At the start of the day I would have been happy to take two points away from Kingsholm, but if we had managed to cut out a few of the basic errors we could have been celebrating a five-point haul on the way back to Bristol.
Although we are left to rue the passes that went astray, the kicks that didn’t find touch and the lineouts that fell into the wrong hands, this was a battling performance by the Bears. Even Joe Joyce, the King of Southmead, was bloodied but unbowed come the end and in Ellis Genge we have a true leader on the pitch that galvanises the team around him.
The trip to Gloucester is always one of the fixtures I look forward to in the season. It is a city that loves its rugby and as you walked through the streets on Saturday you could see flags draped from bars, restaurants and shops. Every pub was full of fans bedecked in the famous cherry and white, ruminating on the game ahead.
