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Recap: Northampton Saints vs Bristol LIVE | Gallagher Premiership
By RugbyPass
Follow all the action on the RugbyPass live blog from the Gallagher Premiership match between Northampton Saints and Bristol at Franklin’s Gardens.
Keep up to date with the latest score, stats and join the conversation from anywhere in the world in our Live Match Centre (click here).
Pat Lam says his Bristol team will relish the challenge of Sunday’s Gallagher Premiership clash against fellow play-off candidates Northampton.
Bristol head to Franklin’s Gardens knowing that victory is likely to put them in fourth spot following Gloucester’s home defeat at the hands of leaders Exeter on Friday. Saints, though, are just five points behind Exeter in second, which underlines the size of Bristol’s task.
“Going to Northampton is always a massive challenge,” Bristol rugby director Lam told the club’s official website. “But it’s a game we are excited by because you are playing a team that loves to play rugby and it could potentially be a really good game for the neutral and for everybody.
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“Putting the work in and following on from what we did against Gloucester (last month), it puts us in good shape to go there. We are under no illusion as to how tough that will be, but we’re excited by it.
“We’ve had a really beneficial two weeks of recovery and hard work on the training field to ensure we are fit and firing for a big test against a well-coached side.
“Credit to the conditioning and medical team, there is excellent availability in the squad and we are relishing this next block of Premiership fixtures, starting with Northampton.”
Bristol are boosted by the return of full-back Charles Piutau, who has not played since suffering a knee ligament injury six weeks ago. And that is Bristol’s only change of personnel from the side who beat Gloucester, with Luke Morahan reverting to wing duties.
Northampton will be without fly-half talisman Dan Biggar as he continues his recovery from a head injury. The Wales star went off during last Saturday’s Guinness Six Nations defeat against Ireland in Dublin, although he is understood to be on course for next week’s Cardiff appointment with France.
James Grayson wears Saints’ number 10 shirt as rugby director Chris Boyd makes five changes from the side beaten at home by London Irish last time out.
Scotland centre Rory Hutchinson will line up in midfield alongside Matt Proctor, who starts his first match since December after recovering from a concussion, while fellow backs Tom Collins and Harry Mallinder also feature.
In the pack, lock Alex Moon returns from England duty to partner Alex Coles in the second row, and prop Alex Waller packs down alongside Mike Haywood and Owen Franks.
WATCH: The behind the scenes RugbyPass documentary on Bristol Bears
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Stephen Larkham, Mick Byrne, Scott Wisental, Ben Mowen, Les Kiss, Jim McKay, Rod Kafer.
There are plenty of great Australian coaches who could do a better job than Schmidt.
Go to commentsThis piece is nothing more than the result of revisionist fancy of Northern Hemisphere rugby fans. Seeing what they want to see, helped but some surprisingly good results and a desire to get excited about doing something well.
I went back through the 6N highlights and sure enough in every English win I remembered seeing these exact holes on the inside, that are supposedly the fallout out of a Felix Jones system breaking down in the hands of some replacement. Every time the commentators mentioned England being targeted up the seam/around the ruck or whatever. Each game had a try scored on the inside of the blitz, no doubt it was a theme throughout all of their games. Will Jordan specifically says that Holland had design that move to target space he saw during their home series win.
Well I'm here to tell you they were the same holes in a Felix Jones system being built as well. This woe is now sentiment has got to stop. The game is on a high, these games have been fantastic! It is Englands attack that has seen their stocks increase this year, and no doubt that is what SB told him was the teams priority. Or it's simply science, with Englands elite players having worked towards a new player welfare and management system, as part of new partnership with the ERU, that's dictating what the players can and can't put their bodies through.
The only bit of truth in this article is that Felix is not there to work on fixing his defence. England threw away another good chance of winning in the weekend when they froze all enterprise under pressure when no longer playing attacking footy for the second half. That mindset helped (or not helped if you like) of course by all this knee jerk, red brained criticism.
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