Bristol climbed into the Gallagher Premiership top four with a commanding 52-19 victory over Newcastle at Kingston Park, but the win came at a significant cost as several players succumbed to injuries. Director of rugby Pat Lam described the situation as the worst injury crisis he has encountered in over two decades of coaching.
Injury woes mount for Bristol
Joe Batley was withdrawn before kick-off, and Rich Lane limped off with a hamstring injury after scoring. Gabriel Oghre jarred his knee and hobbled off, while Lam fears Benjamin Grondona's season is over due to a pectoral problem. Noah Heward also felt his hamstring and was removed as a precaution. Lam confirmed that all affected players will undergo scans on Monday.
“In my whole years of coaching in 20-odd years, this is the worst it’s been,” Lam said. “When you consider Pedro Rubiolo, Viliame Mata, Steve Luatua, AJ MacGinty, Louis Rees-Zammit, there’s so many players out. After pre-season I quietly had a word with the board and owner Steve Lansdown and said I am that confident we have got a group ready to go and then boom, I spoke too soon with all the injuries. But in this life, it’s how you adapt, you can’t change it or control it. We’re going to keep fighting and it’s going to go all the way to the end of the season.”
Play-off race heats up
Bristol ran in eight tries against the bottom-placed Red Bulls to secure an emphatic win, moving above Exeter into fourth place. However, Exeter can reclaim a top-four spot by winning at Gloucester on Sunday. Bristol now face a crucial home match against sixth-placed Saracens in a fortnight, a team that has won their last nine encounters against the Bears.
“We’ve got four more matches to try and win,” Lam added. “The run-in to the Prem is always excellent, there’s something on all these games. Sarries at home, we haven’t beaten them for a few years now so it’s going to be a huge game for both teams. If they beat Leicester, they’ll be right there so it’s going to be massive.”
Newcastle's struggles continue
Newcastle, who announced Dan McFarland will take over as head coach from next season, suffered their 13th defeat in 14 Premiership matches, leaving them eight points adrift of safety. Despite the loss, interim head coach Stephen Jones found positives in the performance.
“Lots of that game I was happy with,” Jones said. “Where we’ve got to learn and learn quickly is when we turn over, our ability to transition into defence. If you look at how that game finished, we had some 19-year-old boys on the park, we had a guy playing for the first time in the jersey, some really, really big moments for players. It just bodes well for the future of the club. Those are the green shoots, a lot of youngsters having good game time and good experience in the Prem.”
