On a hot afternoon London Irish started at a blistering pace that they maintained throughout.  Indeed they might have played too fast, as they missed a number of try scoring chances with forward passes and knock-ons.  In any event they nearly scored from the first move of the game.  Over enthusiastic tackling then saw Hala'ufia receive a yellow card, but his absence was barely noticeable.  Irish edged into the lead with a Homer penalty (D'oh).  Somehow (helped by some terrible passing into touch) Bristol survived this early pressure and managed an attack of their own with Tom Arscott and Lee Robinson to the fore.  A five metre scrum was the result and as the ball was held up in a ruck just short of the line Scott Linklater popped out of the side and over the line just left of the posts.  In fairness, given a couple of Irish's later efforts, I think there may have been a bit of accidental offside, but I'm not sure.  From Bristol's first bit of possession we had claimed an unlikely 3 - 7 lead and saw the Premiership's only 100% place kicker Tom Arscott convert.

Irish came right back at Bristol and only good defence kept them out.  I'm none too clear exactly what happened down in the far corner because everyone stood up (oh the pleasures of all seated stadia).  The hosts were not to be denied and the excellent Kennedy was left with no one to oppose him as the Bristol defence ran out of numbers and it was 8 - 7 with half an hour gone.  Given the style of play it seemed scant reward.  They then kicked another penalty and swiftly scored an excellent try as Steffon Armitage went in for the final score of the half at 16 - 7.  Bristol were fortunate to be so close having spent much of the half defending on their own 22.

The second half saw Irish quickly back into their stride and an innovative piece of Hodgson passing saw the ball go quickly down the line for Kennedy to score again.  Thankfully the Irish place kicking was not up to the standards of other aspects of their game.  In fact it was shocking.  They might have tried two things: firstly get the kids from half time to coach them or resort to dropped conversions.  Lucky escape for Bristol though.  Still, it was 21 - 7.  The crowd were then entertained to a typical piece of David Lemi magic.  He had been on for just seconds, replacing Ed Barnes, when he seized on to a rather vague Irish pass on the Bristol 22.  He anticipated well and outpaced everyone to score.  Tarscott converted and Bristol looked back in the game at 21 - 14.

In reality, of course, this was an opportunistic score completely against the run of play.  Bristol had done well with what little possession they had, but had scarcely spent any time in Irish's half.  Irish showed their dominance with Thompstone scoring just a few minutes later (although this was one of their more dubious efforts with a couple of problems in the build up, including what looked a fairly obvious piece of crossing).  Surprisingly Bristol just managed to hold out for another 15 or so minutes despite continued Irish pressure.  Their final try came from some rather unstructured play when Bristol turned over some rare possession and the ball was scuffed downfield.  The pickup was good but Bristol just managed to scramble back to halt the move just short of the line.  Illegally though, and Hodgson darted over the line.  Frankly this was probably the most dubious try of the lot.  Firstly the referee was still lecturing a couple of Bristol players for killing the ball, secondly he had his back to the ball, thirdly I'm none too sure that Hodgson actually tapped the ball and lastly I think he might have dropped it over the line (I'll have to check on the highlights later).  No problems there then!  Astonishingly the try was converted for a 33 - 14 lead.   A rather better effort, and more typical of the quality of Irish's play, saw Thompstone go over for a sixth, but again unconverted, try.

However, it was Bristol who had the last word with some adventurous play.  They worked the ball into midfield and drove up to half way.  They ball went out and then was flipped back inside for Luke Eves who ran a good line and showed both his pace an strength to go over by the posts for a converted try and a final scoreline of 38 -21.

The scoreline could easily have been much worse with Irish squandering 19 points with some erratic kicking from a number of different sources.  Some of their rugby was perhaps the best I've seen from anyone this season.  Their lineout was solid and open play was at pace with offloading out of the tackle.  In contrast Bristol looked slower and simpler, although were by no means disgraced.  The difference between the sides was most clearly shown by the fact that the Bristol starting backs consisted entirely of players from ND1 and a product of the academy.  Incidentally, I should acknowledge that my opinion of Junior Fatialofa was wrong.  He has been playing well these past couple of games.  Yes, he does still tend to fly in and miss a couple of tackles but he looks strong and has a good turn of pace.  Sorry.

Once again we are condemned to relegation at London Irish.  Those drums are so infuriating and I do think the way in which they countdown as someone attempts to catch a high kick is terribly unsporting.  Mind you if they can attract 11,000 when we had fewer than 5,000 for our last game, they must be doing something right (other than challenging for top, of course).  Our challenge is to regroup for a campaign in ND1 or the Championship.  At least this time we will have more than one registered first team player.  Whether we come straight back up is an interesting question.  If we assume Leeds are promoted then we will still face a strong line up.  It is patronising to assume that a team of Exeter's quality and strong infrastructure are just there to provide target practice for Bristol.  After all, as pointed out above a large number of our squad originally came from that league in the first place.  Clearly we'll be losing a few more players before next season starts and we'll only recruit a couple of replacements.  Interesting times await.

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