As the old cliché goes, form is temporary but class is permanent and on Friday night the ‘Bears’ Way’ - a rugby philosophy that had been constructed from the wreckage of serial underachievement and the trauma of forced migration away from a spiritual home - finally reasserted itself again in the most forceful of fashions.
As a fusion of all-court game play, collaborative effort and a sprinkling of superstar magic it is an approach to rugby union that was designed to inspire a local community and get neutral observers purring. Northampton Saints may have been weakened by absences but this is a side that were third in the Premiership and who score points for fun, so to see them so utterly dismantled by a rampant Bristol side was bordering on the absurd.
There were many, many things to like about Friday night and the way in which the Gate was rocking on the final whistle says as much about the frustration of an inconsistent season as to the rugby poetry that had just been witnessed.
