[Narbia]

Would be real nice to see a replication of the discipline and shape of Saturday's game.

At some point the sleeping Bear will arise from its slumber : bookies having them as just marginal favourite - although it is only Tuesday.....

[SixNineOne]

I agree 100%, but I'm not sure which Bristol Bears team we'll be facing. They put a decidedly 2nd string team out in round 5 and duly lost to Falcons, but they had a rest weekend in round 6, so it'll be interesting to see if any of their big names are fit again for Saturday. Whoever they select, I'd like to think that if we play like last weekend we'll have enough organisational nous and defensive structure to contain them and then unleash a few attacks of our own. I'm not clear whether Steve Mafi will be available for us or whether he'll be playing for Tonga against Scotland, given that this weekend is not part of the international calendar.

[Stevie J]

I think Prem clubs only had to release England players to a camp so I think Sinkler and Randall will be out. In theory all other internationals should be available unless we allow Mafi to play.

EDIT: Mafi is not in the Tonga 23 this weekend.

[Stevie J]

Talking Rugby Union - Interview with Marcel Van Der Merwe https://www.talkingrugbyunion.co.uk/mar ... /31715.htm

[SixNineOne]

Here are the officials for Saturday:

Referee: Matthew Carley
ARs: Adam Leal & Wayne Falla
TMO: Craig Maxwell-Keys

I seem to recall Carley getting somewhat petulant when he reffed for us last season, so hopefully we can manage him better this time. Once again, it looks like the offside line won’t be policed…

[Stevie J]

Shamelessly nicked from Bristol Post, here are some interesting* OPTA** stats for Irish ahead of this one:

• London Irish have gone two Premiership home games against Bristol Bears without a win (D1 L1), after winning seven of their previous nine home games against them in the competition (D1, L1).
• London Irish are winless in their last six games at home in the Premiership (D2 L4), they have never had a longer stretch of home games without a win in the competition.
• London Irish are just one win away from recording their 200th victory in the Premiership, they’d be the 9th different team to reach this milestone in the competition.
• Only Exeter Chiefs have made more carries per game (142) than London Irish (120) and Bristol Bears (112) in the Premiership this season; the Bears have gained 452 metres per game with their carries, the highest such average among all teams in the league.
• London Irish have successfully made 89.5% of their attempted tackles, the second highest rate among all teams in the Premiership this season; the Exiles have missed an average of 14 tackles per game, the fewest of any team in the league in 2021/22.
• Bristol Bears have attempted (15) and completed (11.4) the most offloads per game of any team in the Premiership this season, it is London Irish’s Curtis Rona who has made the joint most individually however (10, also Nemani Nadolo).
• Albert Tuisue has tallied five jackals for London Irish in the Premiership this season, no other player has made more jackals than him in the league in 2021/22 (Saracens’ Tom Woolstencroft also five).
• London Irish’s Matt Rogerson has hit 129 attacking rucks this season, the most of anyone in the league: of those, 125 were effective hits, also more than any other player in the league this season.

* - Interesting to me
** - Reason why Rugby isn't more popular number 2,645,128 - hiding away stats and advanced metrics behind paywalls unlike every other major sport

[GHA]

London Irish:
15 Tom Parton, 14 James Stokes, 13 Curtis Rona, 12 Benhard van Rensburg, 11 Ollie Hassell-Collins, 10 Paddy Jackson, 9 Nick Phipps, 1 Will Goodrick-Clarke, 2 Mike Willemse, 3 Ollie Hoskins, 4 Steve Mafi, 5 Rob Simmons, 6 Matt Rogerson (c), 7 Isaac Curtis-Harris, 8 Albert Tuisue.

Replacements:
16 Agustin Creevy, 17 Allan Dell, 18 Marcel van der Merwe, 19 George Nott, 20 Jack Cooke, 21 Ben White, 22 Terrence Hepetema, 23 Kyle Rowe

[Lazyboy346]

Interesting selection. Pearson dropping out of the starting team after a great debut understandable as he's young, but surprised Cooke selected over him after playing the A game at lock. Hope he gets more than 4 mins this week at least.

Loader was carrying a knock so Stokes in makes sense. Unsure why Jennings dropped again, presume that Jackson will play the 80 again or Hepetema to 12 and Van Rensburg to 10?

Creevy benching gives us some strength later in the game as we've struggled just after the changeovers in the last couple of games.

Should be enough to win the game, the weather will probably have an impact on how open either team is. Suspect it won't be a 34 all draw again.

[GHA]

Bristol Bears

15 Charles Piutau, 14 Luke Morahan, 13 Jack Bates, 12 Piers O’Conor, 11 Toby Fricker, 10 Callum Sheedy, 9 Andy Uren, 1 Yann Thomas, 2 Jake Kerr, 3 John Afoa, 4 Dave Attwood (co-capt), 5 Joe Joyce, 6 Sam Jeffries, 7 Jake Heenan (co-capt), 8. Fitz Harding

System players [sic] : 16 Harry Thacker, 17 Max Lahiff, 18 Jake Armstrong, 19 John Hawkins, 20 Dan Thomas, 21 Tom Whiteley, 22 Ioan Lloyd, 23 Alapati Leiua

[M_W]

Interesting Team. Hopefully nothing serious up with Loader and good to see ICH getting another shot, even if it is at Pearson's expense.

I will almost certainly regret saying it, but that Bristol pack doesn't look particularly scary.

[Narbia]

Stokes and Rowe have been playing in the A team games. Rowe in particular has got some turn of pace, and I hope to see it tomorrow.

As ever, the first set of darts at the lineout needs to be thrown short.

Hopefully Cooke gets more than a 2-minute cameo, as that all he seems to have had for ages.

Feeling good about this one: there you are, I've gone and spooked it now.

Edit : OK I'll stick my neck out here... LI 35 : 25 Bristol Bears.

[SixNineOne]

Feeling good about this one: there you are, I've gone and spooked it now.

I’ve always wondered what it might feel like for supporters of other teams who approach a match with a sense of optimism that their team might win. This is not something I’ve experienced myself…

[DaveAitch]

Edit : OK I'll stick my neck out here... LI 35 : 25 Bristol Bears.

If you hadn't given Bristol a three try lead you would have been close to spot on with the score.

[SixNineOne]

So I’ve been complaining about our line out throwing in the 22 and I’m glad to say that it has improved significantly. But it looks like we’ve got a new thing to work on. We got repeatedly sucker punched by the rush down the blind side wing because we weren’t covering it properly at the ruck, leaving poor old Tom Parton having to decide which of three on-rushing Bristol players to tackle. We all know that’s how Bristol like to play so it’s a bit disappointing that we weren’t better prepared. Also, I have to say our midfield defence looked somewhat porous compared to last week. I’ll have to watch the replay before deciding what the problem was, but one problem that was abundantly evident was Matthew Carley. The standard of refereeing this season has been very good (apart from the ARs not policing the offside line), but I thought Carley didn’t have a good game today with his petulant attitude and a few bizarre decisions. But all credit to Bristol, who showed some very adept game management and made sure that of the two sides that scored five tries, they came out on top!

[M_W]

Well that was a pretty disappointing one in the end. Another game where we actually had a lot of the ball, but conceded huge amounts of ground to Bristol when they went from deep. The defensive discipline and commitment to the drift that worked so well against Exeter seemed to be missing.

Played some nice stuff with ball in hand, but it was another game where we spent everything we had hauling back that 19 point lead.

[MattM]

So I’ve been complaining about our line out throwing in the 22 and I’m glad to say that it has improved significantly.

I can only partially agree with this. The throws were definitely more accurate but we threw to the same spot in the line pretty much every single time and if I could predict it from the stands no wonder Bristol found it easy enough to respond to.
Thats probably emblematic of our play in general. No variety, no plan B... Any spark came from individual ingenuity rather than team play.

I've seen a lot of "Bristol were very good" comments across social media and if I'm honest I didn't see that from them. They were decent, but we let them look good. The lack of defence on the blindside wing was something they exploited time and again and we made no attempt to resolve.

So very frustrating...

[Stevie J]

I’ll need to watch again on Premiership Rugby TV but the first thing that stuck with me was that blind side defence Matt. We got caught out several times after initially defending it well. The book on Bristol is they try to play out from the 22. When you defend it they cough up ball, and they did at least twice this match. But we were ill disciplined and got caught out several times.

With Carley, it seemed like we were not on the same page and his interpretations on certain laws just didn’t match ours. We could not slow down the ruck to win much turnover ball and without Creevy that was left to Albert and in one case Rona (who I felt was pretty unlucky to be pinged).

I’d rather not blame the referee though, I mean he sent off three Bristol players and we were unable to capitalise.

The rolling maul did very little. To the point above Willemse only missed once I think but a few of his throws were just caught by Simmons, very audible noises in the stand as he caught them just barely! Once we got it to 19-19 we were back in it and there was a definitely a way to win but the Albert yellow killed any momentum as Bristol scored their BP. At times we completely seemed switched off and it does nothing in my head to get away from a few facts - we cannot play the same 15 week on week and expect good results. We need to rotate our players more often and examine what we are trying to do with this team and squad makeup.

We have a lot of our cap and marquee spent in players who potentially could be going end of this season. From those 10 players we signed on promotion 9 are left. Dell, Coleman, SOB have either been injured or ineffective (more Dell on that one). If Coleman’s salary as reputed is accurate there’s over £1m right there. If he stays, can we get more out of him? Or do we just need to accept that top players need more rest?

Our best team is very good but we play them every week until the wheels fall off. And when a lot of your best players are 30 plus they don’t tend to play every week. And they take longer to come back.

[M_W]

There were certainly some really basic defensive errors that were exposed. The ones that come to mind are Stokes cutting in on the inside man when White had him covered resulting in the break for their second try and Creevy missing a regulation tackle on Harding for the Thacker try. And it goes without saying that conceding from our kick off like we did for their third, just shouldn't be allowed to happen. They didn't have to do much more than smartly exploit the numbers and space.

I found Carley fairly condescending and picky in his interaction with the players. He wasn't the reason we lost though. As you say, he was fairly happy to bin their players and lots of refs wouldn't have picked up the obstruction for their disallowed try.

Interesting point about the long term plan for the team. Coleman is certainly a key decision. I doubt he's on the money quoted in a few articles, but there's little doubt he'll be on plenty. Great player when he wears the shirt, but you'd question whether he's value for money. Others like Jackson and Rona (already extended) from that cohort definitely are.

[Narbia]

Running from deep, down the blind-side 2 on 1 overlaps to score a try from nothing used to be LI's stock in trade. So there's little excuse to be caught out by the same, repeatedly.

Some of guys out there understandably looked a bit tired yesterday; I'm assuming with all the new hires we're going to start drip feeding them into the first team?

It looked to me as though the game plan was all wrong - as said above, only bits of individual genius brought reward.

Next game Saracens. Last time we played in N.London* we were denied by some controversial ref. decisions IMO. At least the draw, maybe the win. 6th November is just a week away. Surely not the same 23 playing?

Edit: * that was 2019, Saracens 16 : 13 London Irish.