Bristol Bears vanquish an entire country to get the buzz back around Ashton Gate

After a few tricky weeks the club had a great opportunity to inject some major feel good into BS3 with the arrival of a South African XV to face a Bears side eager to claim a national scalp in front of record sell out crowd.

This wasn’t a ‘hastily arranged’ match to compensate for a disrupted fixture list but rather a pre-planned marketing coup that caught the imagination of rugby lovers across the city and, I heard on the grapevine, even a few Bath fans!

Those expecting to see the likes of Kolisi, Eztebeth and Kolbe may have been at touch disappointed but with the full national team facing Italy two days later the majority realised way in advance that it would be the understudies gracing the Ashton Gate stage.