Bristol Out Muscle Warriors

4 September 2006, 2:34 pm

Match report by Mark Higgitt

Warriors director of rugby John Brain apologised to Worcester supporters for an “unacceptable” performance as Bristol out-muscled, out-mauled and out-thought his side at Sixways.

The visitors executed their game plan almost to perfection, winning the key lineout ball, dictating the rhythm of the match at half-back and putting their foot on the accelerator during the final 20 minutes when Worcester threatened, briefly, to steal something from the game.

In short, the result – if not the margin – rarely seemed in doubt from the moment Bristol fly-half Jason Strange landed the second of his four penalties in the 16th minute. Though Shane Drahm pegged both back, and Phil Murphy’s opportunist try just before half-time answered one each from Gareth Llewellyn and Lee Robinson, that was as good as it was going to be.

With a consistency and confidence that Worcester could neither match nor unsettle, the visitors weathered a short-lived period of Warriors pressure in the middle of the second-half and hustled for the mistakes that would present them with a five-try bonus point.

After watching scrum-half Nick Runciman limp off on 28 minutes, Warriors lost lost prop Chris Horsman to the sin-bin and then Dale Rasmussen to a nasty concussion in a bleak 20-minute period when they visited the opposition half only rarely.

But it was the final 15 minutes when the most evident damage was done, with Robinson, Craig Morgan and Shaun Perry running in tries that looked increasingly inevitable and were accepted without hesitation.

“By the standards we set ourselves, that was an unacceptable performance. I’d like to apologise to our supporters who paid good money to see it. Everything they did came off, but we were out-muscled and out-mauled, and their 9 and 10 did a good job in controlling the game and putting us under pressure. They thoroughly deserved to win. We’ve got a very hard couple of weeks in front of us” – Warriors director of rugby John Brain

“We would expect to respond with a much better performance than that. The tone for our game is usually set by our forward pack, but we were outplayed in the lineout and they basically did to us what we’ve been used to doing to teams for two seasons. That is hard to bear but there are solutions and it’s up to me and the players to arrive at those solutions and implement them as soon as possible” – Warriors director of rugby John Brain
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“That was a real setback for us today. But it’s only as bad as how we react to it and come back from it. Once again, we owe our supporters an apology because that’s not what they’re used to turning up, paying good money to see. I know all the players feel as well” – Warriors director of rugby John Brain

Timeline

7m 0-3 Strange (p)
16m 0-6 Strange (p)
19m 3-6 Drahm (p)
21m 3-13 Llewellyn (t), Strange (c)
24m 6-13 Drahm (p)
33m 6-18 Robinson (t)
36m 11-18 Murphy (t)
61m 11-21 Strange (p)
65 11-24 Strange (p)
70m 11-29 Robinson (t)
75m 11-36 Morgan (t)
79m 11-41 Perry (t)