After the Lord Mayor's Show...

By J.J. (on 10/11/02)
September 6 2005

At the same time as England and New Zealand were putting on an excellent display of flowing and exciting rugby, The Lord Mayor's Show was taking place in London.

And after The Lord Mayor's Show came our debacle at Bristol!

The omens were not good (no Wilko, Grimesy or Brotherstone) and it appeared as if we'd left our "defence manual" back in Newcastle.

With 24 points in 24 minutes, Bristol already had a bonus point in the bag courtesy of two tries from Daniels and one each from Christophers and Contepomi. Three of the tries were from turn overs or fumbles from Newcastle. We only had a solitary penalty from Va'a to show for our efforts.

Va'a only lasted 34 minutes before being replaced by Godman and he was probably grateful to get back in the changing room.

A minute into first half injury time Hugh had the ball in their 22 with only one man to beat, but fell over and dropped the ball. It was that kind of day!. Bristol finished the half as they had started, with another scorching try from Christophers - controversially after ref. Spreadbury had given yet another penalty for a Newcastle player holding on. This left the half time score 31 -3.

Rob made wholesale substitutions at the start of the second half but it didn't seem to make much difference. Bristol scored their sixth try on 53 minutes and an even bigger total looked on the cards.

On 56 minutes, however, Newcastle got their consolation try. In one of our rare incursions into their 22, Epi picked up the ball from the back of a ruck and crashed over the line. Liam converted to make the score 38 - 10. There were no more scores in this half but this was down to Bristol's poor finishing rather than Newcastle's defence.

Steve Bates apologised to the travelling fans after the game and this about sums it up!

Falcons' starting line up:

1. I. Peel, 2. M.Thomson, 3. M. Hurter, 4. C. Hamilton, 5. A. Springgay, 6. J.Dunbar, 7. R. Arnold, 8. H. Vyvyan (Capt.), 9. H. Charlton, 10. E. Va'a, 11. M. Stephenson, 12. T. May, 13. J. Noon, 14. L. Botham, 15., M. Wilkinson

Replacements:

16. J. Grindal, 17. P.Godman, 18. M. Ward, 19. N.Makin, 20. S. Otuvaka, 21. E.Taione