Bath thought they had got off to a great start when Olly Barkley crossed the try line under the Bristol posts after just 90 seconds but he failed to score, losing possession when he should have grabbed the first points. This was typical of the first half as Bath dominated possession and territory but had to wait until 3 minutes in to injury time before they scored a try, through Pieter Dixon.

With ten minutes gone Barkley has his second opportunity to open the scoring for Bath with a penalty, but again he missed his opportunity. However Bath finally opened their account after 25 minutes with a successful penalty from Barkley. Bristol replied with a penalty of their own 8 minutes later to make the score 3-3.

Joe El Abd was sin binned for killing the ball with just 6 minutes left in the first half to give the Bath pack a major advantage but they struggled at times to make the extra man count. With just a few moments to go in the first half Bath trundled forward and thought they had scored with Gareth Delve holding the ball over the line but the referee decided the ball wasn't grounded as a Bristol player got himself between ball and ground. Fortunately Dixon grabbed his score moments later.

At half-time with the score at 8-3 to Bath, coach Connolly will have been pleased with the lead but disappointed that his charges hadn't taken full advantage of their dominating play whereas Richard Hill will have seen the score as some sort of moral victory..

Bristol started the second half as Bath started the first, by peppering the line with try opportunities but this time the attacking side actually scored with scrum-half, Nicholls touching down. The conversion from Danny Gray took the visitors in to the lead (8-10) for the first time of the afternoon - but it was short lived. A second Barkley penalty gave Bath back a very narrow lead (11-10) within a few minutes of conceding the lead. This lead was stretched even further by an amazing 52 metre penalty kick by Barkley and a much shorter effort to give Bath a 17-10 lead. Barkley grabbed another penalty and Tom Cheeseman finished the match off with a later try to give Bath a valuable 25-10 win.

A win is a win, as they say!

Bath: Abendanon; Bory, Cheeseman, Davis, Higgins; Barkley, Wood; Stevens, Dixon, Bell, Borthwick, Grewcock, Beattie, Scaysbrook, Delve.
Replacements: Mears, Barnes, Goodman, Hudson, Williams, Malone, Finau.

Bristol: Marsden; Stanojevic, Cox, Denney, Lemi; Gray, Nicholls; Irish, Clarke, Thompson, Kohn, Hodge, Winters, El Abd, Ward-Smith
Replacements: Howick, Hiett, Attwood, Pennycook, Rauluni, Pritchard, Reay.

Referee: R Debney (RFU)

View a Printer Friendly version of this Story.

Bookmark or share this story with:

• Digg
• Delicious
• Facebook
• Reddit
• Stumbleupon

SPORTNETWORK SPECIALS

Bath Poll