Video: The 90-metre 'total rugby' team try that Bristol delivered on Tuesday
Title-chasing Bristol were in their element on Tuesday night at Ashton Gate, putting seven tries on an inexperienced Northampton to lift them into second place in the Gallagher Premiership ahead of the round's remaining five matches on Wednesday evening.
The Bears scored some lovely tries but the pick of the bunch was the team effort finished off by Piers O'Conor on 66 minutes, the third in a four-try burst in a nine-minute second-half spell which pushed the winning margin out to 47-10.
After Callum Sheedy had just landed the conversion of Ben Earl's try, Bristol lined up to receive the restart kick and what unfolded was delicious, seven different players handling (one player twice) and seven passes being seamlessly executed in the single-phase play which enabled Pat Lam's side to go nearly the whole length of the Premiership pitch.
With the ball dropping from the skies on the 22-metre line, it deflected into Earl's hands and he quickly flashed a pass away left to Sheedy, who just as quickly transferred the ball to his left to Daniel Thomas.
Now deep in his 22, the replacement back row briefly embarked on a straight run before finding Semi Radradra to his left who passed to Alapati Leiua. The winger checked inside from the touchline crossing the 22 before passing to the supporting Thomas.
The forward carried the ball on and at the ten-metre line, he passed to Chris Cook, who then found O'Conor on halfway. The centre pinned back his ears to pace clear outside James Grayson and from there he had a straight run to the line.
"Total rugby. Total rugby," enthused Ugo Monye, the 2009 British and Irish Lion who was on punditry duty for live broadcaster BT Sport. "They just travelled up the pitch, 90 metres, not a single phase."
Lawrence Dallaglio added: The awareness of where the men are, where the space is. The switch looks good as well, just lovely work down the channel."
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The surprising stat I saw in the Blues game when showing Sotutu equaling the Blues forwards record was that Akira has not scored a try since 2019. Now my memory is pretty bad when it comes to those sorts of the things, I can remember his AB try though, but anyway I can’t see I can remember his last blues touchdown or any in recent years. Surely that still has to be a bogus stat. Maybe excludes SRA games?
Go to commentsDude to me looks pretty fast for a big man, nearly 2m and 130kg, in his workout vid he was signed off. Possibly a bit slow on his reads movement wise though, but I’ve not got anything to compare him to. Hope the dude nails it and finds his sport, could have been a devastating lock in rugby if he wasn’t a footballer growing up.
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