Big Bristol Challenge

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Great to see the main man back where he belongs.

Just seen the Bristol line up, quality all over the park. Just as well Pritch is back as we're going to need his leadership on the field.

I love a " BIG BRISTOL CHALLENGE "

In his T&C interview Mr Rayer says no one can give a complete 80 minutes performance which I think is a very odd thing to say just before we play one of the best teams in the league.

Not sure if he is refering to the Blues or other teams in the Chapionship. I've seen a number of teams in this league give 80 minutes, Pirates last Friday being the latest.

Do we have a lot of big @#$%& in this club ?

Can use the mammory in the post above? And what about all the twitchers on the web site - can we not have a discussion about the Blue Great Long Tail Coal Bearded Crested Willow or we can ever forget the Marsh

Quote:

Blue for you
Can use the mammory in the post above? And what about all the twitchers on the web site - can we not have a discussion about the Blue Great Long Tail Coal Bearded Crested Willow or we can ever forget the Marsh

Have you nicked Compo's drugs?

So where's Billy Moss no mention on the website of an injury?

Perhaps it's to keep him out of the shop window or just a case of crop rotation again

PPB- Mr R still doesn't know his 1st choice front row IMO

Iron Blue said

"Have you nicked Compo's drugs?"

No I have had my 'medication' checked and it's all there.

Well Donny got a losing bonus, puts us into 10th place. Crunch game will be against Moseley



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2015:03:29:15:23:20 by Jonathan Wilcox.

14-0 after 22, Gulliver off on stretcher

Bedford Blues Twitter not updating. Follow on Bristol Rugby twitter. 14-0 after 35. NFW in bin

Harry Wells also in the bin

2nd half we'll be starting with 13 men

Correction 12 men Pritch also in the bin!

Bristol try 19-0, miss conversion

Ht 19-0 with 3 players still in the bin

2nd half underway

Up to 14 men

Try Bris 24-0 misses conversion

Try blues Toops in and Sharp converts 24-7

Try Blues Toops in again sharp converts 24-14

Try Bris and get conversion 31-14 on 58

Attendance 7435

Bristol ring the changes on 69

Not long left

Toops in the bin

Try Bris and conversion 38-14

Ft 38-14

Who was the man in the middle?

PPB ? sorry

Think from reading Rolling Maul weekend preview a couple of days ago, Steve Lee. Would be interested to know what people who went felt about the triple sin-bins as Blues match report is painting it as a great injustice From what I deciphered from the radio coverage of the second half and Bristol twitter feed (what happened to ours?), sounded like we put up a fight, but Bristol had just too much class and took most of their chances.

Match report: referee and luck not on our side - we could have been a contender

Hello Bedford, enjoyed your visit to the gate and you put in a gutsy performance.
1st yellow was for persistent infringement after ref warned you a few times when giving away pens in your 22. 2nd was a bit 50/50. 3rd the ref really didn't have much choice as Pritchard flapped at a pretty much certain scoring pass and only being about 15m out didn't help.

If I'm honest I didn't think you could complain too much and my view on final brawl was that our no.1 and Tupai should have seen yellow for a wrestle fest but then Tupai got up and clobbered him right in front of touch judge. Should have been yellow for us and red for Tupai.

Hope rest of the season goes well and looking at our defensive record we will probably be seeing you again next year!

2 tries and a yellow, Toops hatrick.

No, your club's match report is terribly one sided. I was in a good position for all three of the yellow cards, and none of them were harsh at all. In fact he could have gone for yellow earlier with one of your guys on the wrong side, on the ground and flapping away at the ball. I say that because the ref nearly tripped over him so it was quite obvious! The second was for pulling down the maul and could have been for side entry too, which again made it pretty obvious. Pritchard had one hand out at full extension, there was no way he could have caught the ball and it was a two on none overlap after him. I've seen penalty tries for that. He did exactly the same late on in the game and the ref ought to have gone for yellow then red for that, and I say that because he did penalise it and there was again an overlap.

As for the punch-up I didn't see how it started because I was following play. Tupai wasn't the only one involved so there probably should have been more cards. Yes, for Bristol. But you could quite easily have given a red for the Bristol player pinned to the ground and punched in the head when unable to defend himself. Not saying Bristol were innocent (in fact I doubt it), but when your club's match report strongly implies Bedford were hard done to in the incident perhaps they might not want to draw too much attention to what went on.

I wasn't there so can't make any valuable contribution but....
Bedford's discipline has been very poor this season and are now looking for anyone to blame for our prolonged losing streak rather than face up to the fact that we are now in a relegation dog-fight because of a series of poor performances. Toops, fine stalwart that he is, has always been a 'loose cannon' and in Harry Wells we have someone ready to fill Toops status as 'enforcer' when the big man finally hangs up his boots.
The Moseley match this coming Saturday will have an enormous influence over where we shall be playing next season. Do the Blues have the desire and commitment to get out there and play for 85 minutes as though their future depended upon a winning performance?

Yaffle - the next league match is a week Saturday, we play the Army on Wednesday.

As it stands with 3 to go. Championship or ND1 next season, time will tell.

1 Bristol 19 18 0 1 669 363 17 89
2 Worcester 19 17 0 2 724 271 18 86
3 London Scottish 19 11 2 6 490 404 11 59
4 Nottingham 19 11 0 8 396 506 6 50
5 Rotherham Titans 19 10 1 8 439 450 7 49
6 Yorkshire Carnegie 19 8 1 10 395 411 10 44
7 Cornish Pirates 19 9 0 10 456 497 7 43
8 Jersey 19 6 2 11 379 398 10 38
9 Doncaster 19 6 1 12 360 420 7 33
10 Bedford 19 6 0 13 366 532 8 32
11 Moseley 19 4 1 14 370 566 9 27
12 Plymouth Albion 19 3 2 14 291 517 4 20

Bristol vs Bedford match analysis: Bonus-point win keeps Bristol on course for the title

[www.bristolpost.co.uk]

Thanks Bristol people. Have to admit when I first read the match report and having watched Bedford all season concede at times some silly penalties, was sceptical. Added to that 2 of the yellow cards being for serial offenders, Harry Wells and Paul Tupai, did think they were being 'economical with the truth'.

We need to get our act together and win our last 3 games, or else we could suffer the same fate as Plymouth, finishing previous season poorly and getting going in next season when it's too little, too late (can't see Plymouth stringing 3 wins together, particularly Bristol (H), so reckon we're safe this year at least)!

G B - "We need to get our act together......." Blimey have you only just realised that.. With the exception of 2 or 3 games we've been poor all season.

I can also see us picking up at least the odd point, which would mean Plymouth needing bp wins.

Plymouth down - we finish just above them - Magoo pays £100 to the charity

Just watched the tries we conceded quite a few are disappointing and appear to be due to a lack of communication and laziness of players being out of position.

Don't know why Morgan didn't just put the ball down behind his try line as the ball was still moving, even if he gave up the scrum it would've been better. He also didn't fancy tackling Tupai for the 2nd.

TB - missed tackles, embarrassing to watch.

No doubt more rotation to follow.........

Quote:

Blue for you
Plymouth down - we finish just above them - Magoo pays £100 to the charity

I have my own charities I give to thank you

[www.youtube.com]

Mr Magoo

No problem Mr Magoo - is the bet on then? - give to any charity you like

Quote:

Jonathan Wilcox
Yaffle - the next league match is a week Saturday, we play the Army on Wednesday.

I'm grateful to you JW for pointing this out as it will save me a 200 mile round trip.
So, Saturday 11th March for the 'big one'.

I'm sure you are correct BFY. The Blues won't go down this season. My point was that Championship Rugby Season Tickets should only be sold when the Blues are mathematically safe from relegation.

Very good point, Magoo, about us selling Championship Season Tickets when we're not mathematically guaranteed staying in the division as yet - cash-flow problem, maybe, or a bit arrogant and far-sighted?

Poor opener and very concerning run of form at the moment, Jonathan Wilcox, but in consideration that until the Yorkshire Carnegie and Jersey games we were right in the thick of mid-table with other inconsistent sides and not far away from 4th amazingly, felt hopeful we'd finish in a solid position in mid-table, far better than last year and something to build on for next year. Recent run, however, of 1 point from 25, is a most alarming dip in form and has seen us follow exact trajectory of last season being not quite safe from relegation with 3 games to go.

Have been concerned even in our Championship final season that we can't get our act together when faced with tough opposition away from home and long for days when we pushed the best home and away rather than sporadically at home. But, if a team training 3 nights a week meets one training 5 whole days a week, have to be philosophical and not expect us to prevail as regularly as before. Ultimately until new investment comes from somewhere, really can't see us at top end of table.

If we had a bit more organisation during games, even as a part time side, that would help, though!

We were far better than the highlights video shows, and was possibly the best performance of 2015.
Bristol will have a big job on their hands to get promoted, although I hope they do go up.

That was your best performance of the year? I was really disappointed with what looked like a side that just turned up to spoil. When you opted not to do that you started to look like the entertaining ball-in-hand side from the recent past. There were a lot of unforced handling errors it is true, but without those you looked good going forward. Sadly it looked like the side was instructed to play in a totally different way.

Yaffle - no problem. No doubt you've got a closer team to go and see this Saturday then if you fancy a rigby fix.

GL - well the orders come from the guy who shares his sandwiches with the other coach and when players try to change the game plan because thing's aren't working they get put on the naughty step and don't feature for a few weeks. That appears to be the management style of our DoR which is why he's gone past his sell by date, whoops wrong thread....

GB - I thought that Moseley away was going to be the turning point, but sadly it wasn't.

Looking at Toops, think he's got another season in him, perhaps doubling up as a coach as well.

I noticed that the punching incident wasn't caught by Bristol's two side on cameras.

Apparently it was shocking to see in front of the large number of children in the crowd.

What happened?